Ireland Degges
Executive Mosaic is excited to announce that NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has received a 2024 Wash100 Award for his commitment to empowering scientific exploration and technological progress through various agency missions.
The Wash100 popular vote contest is in full swing! Click here to cast your vote for Nelson as your favorite 2024 winner.
The esteemed Wash100 Award has honored the most influential leaders in the government contracting industry for 11 years. In each run, Wash100 conducts an exhaustive selection process in which the past accomplishments and anticipated future impact of its nominees are carefully evaluated.
Nelson took the helm of NASA in May 2021. Earlier in his career, he trained and flew with the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia’s 24th flight, a mission in which he carried out 12 medical experiments. Nelson also represented the state of Florida in the U.S. Senate for 18 years and the House of Representatives for 12 years, serving as chairman of the Subcommittees on Science and Space in both chambers.
“Bill has maintained the leading position of the U.S. in space through his methodical and perseverant attention to opening the largest possible aperture mankind can imagine: endless and limitless space,” said Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and founder of the Wash100 Award.
In 2023, Nelson continued his tireless commitment to advancing the U.S. understanding of space by driving a number of initiatives forward, including NASA’s Artemis mission, which aims to land the first woman and first person of color on the moon, leverage cutting-edge technology to investigate the lunar surface and create a long-term presence on the moon. Artemis also prioritizes collaboration with outside partners and is intended to lay the groundwork for future missions to Mars.
In May, NASA awarded a momentous $3.4 billion contract to Blue Origin and partners Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Astrobotic, Draper and Honeybee Robotics to build a human landing system for the Artemis V mission.
The team’s responsibilities under the award include designing, developing and demonstrating Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander, which will support NASA’s effort to transport four astronauts from the Orion spacecraft to the moon’s orbit.
“We are in a golden age of human spaceflight, which is made possible by NASA’s commercial and international partnerships. Together, we are making an investment in the infrastructure that will pave the way to land the first astronauts on Mars,” Nelson commented.
Nelson is also looking ahead at the Artemis II and Artemis III missions, which are now scheduled for September 2025 and September 2026, respectively. Under this new timeline, NASA is applying lessons learned from challenges experienced during Artemis I and evaluating qualifying components, including environmental control and life support systems, batteries and air ventilation and temperature management circuits.
“Artemis represents what we can accomplish as a nation – and as a global coalition. When we set our sights on what is hard, together, we can achieve what is great,” Nelson said.
NASA repeatedly demonstrated its strong commitment to partnerships in 2023. The administration kicked off the year by issuing $175,000 grants to 14 researchers studying experimental space concepts, such as a new type of space observatory and the chemistry of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
Nelson said that NASA’s efforts to “make the impossible possible” are “only achievable because of the innovators, thinkers, and doers who are helping us imagine and prepare for the future of space exploration.”
Just weeks after the grants were announced, the U.S. signed an agreement with Japan to promote collaborative space exploration between the two nations, enabling joint initiatives surrounding space science, operations, technology, transportation, safety, mission assurance and more.
“From low-Earth orbit to the Moon and beyond, Japan is one of NASA’s most significant international partners, and this latest framework agreement will allow us to further collaborate across our agencies’ broad portfolios in exploration, science, and research,” Nelson explained.
Executive Mosaic congratulates Nelson on his first Wash100 Award win. His forward-thinking approach to space exploration has uplifted many NASA programs and we are excited to see where his leadership takes the agency in the future.
