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From the Executive Director

Society Elects New President and Adds Mission to Understand Earth

Click to enlarge > Louis D. Friedman Executive Director of The Planetary Society Credit: The Planetary Society

April 5 , 2007

Dear member,

I am pleased to tell you that our Board of Directors has elected Neil deGrasse Tyson as the new President of The Planetary Society. Neil has been Board Chair for the past three years, but now as President he takes a more direct role in setting Society policy and direction. I am also glad to tell you that Bill Nye the Science Guy will continue as Vice-President, and I will continue on the Board as Secretary-Treasurer and as Executive Director as I have for the past 27 years.

Our new Board Chair is Dan Geraci, a Director for four years who has been a great supporter of the Society and brings to us expertise from the world of finance and business. Dan provided the matching grant for the Apophis Mission Design Competition.

Planetary Society Board members are unpaid volunteers, and we deeply appreciate their service.

We have more information about our Directors and Advisors on our website.

Getting Neil, Bill, and Dan as key leaders along with Directors like Jim Bell, Heidi Hammel, Elon Musk, and George Yancopolous is an important step in transitioning the Society from the generation of its founders (Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and I) to a generation of successors. Of course Bruce and I, and Ann Druyan, Carl's widow and active collaborator are still involved, and Wes Huntress, Chris McKay, Joe Ryan, and Steven Spielberg still serve on the Board.

We congratulate Elon Musk, who recently succeeded in getting his Falcon launch vehicle to space. It wasn't a perfect flight, but we spaceflight veterans know that the road to space is difficult -- but the rewards are great. His test flight was an important milestone in private launch vehicle development.

These are busy people that are in high demand as scientists, educators, and in their own vocations. They are also in high demand with the public – Neil is now joining Bill Nye as a media star with his acclaimed NOVA NOW series on PBS. Our leaders are committed to the Society and they affirm the value of the Society's efforts to meet its mission: to inspire the people of Earth to explore other worlds, understand our own, and seek life elsewhere.

Click to enlarge > Earth's Western Hemisphere This most detailed color image of the Earth's to date, assembled from data captured by the MODIS instrument on the Terra Earth-orbiting satellite. This view covers the western hemisphere. Created: 2 February 2002. Credit: NASA GSFC

At this same Board of Directors meeting at which we elected our new officers, we also added a phrase to our mission statement: understand our own -- referring to understanding Earth. NASA dropped a similar statement from its mission about six months ago -- an action that The Planetary Society criticized. One of the great benefits of space exploration is the increased understanding of our Earth. The images and observations of the Earth are invaluable to this better understanding of our own world, but so too are the discoveries of greenhouse gases, aerosols, and sulfuric acid clouds on Venus, dust storms on Mars, impact craters on the Moon, organic chemistry on Titan, and an ocean on Europa. We think the Society has an important role in emphasizing this connection and in advocating not just exploration of other worlds (including dwarf planets and moons and comets and asteroids) but also observations of Earth as a planet. Hence we decided to add the phrase that NASA subtracted and to increase our advocacy for understanding Earth and the processes that affect its climate and environment.

I want to acknowledge efforts of our staff, particularly our Associate Director Charlene Anderson, for making the case of adding Earth to the Society's mission.

In closing, I want to thank Wes Huntress who has been President the past six years. Wes will remain on the Society Board and -- having served as NASA's Associate Administrator for Science -- will continue to bring us that valuable Washington experience. His many accomplishments at NASA include the growth of Mars exploration, and the initiation of the Cassini, Discovery, Origins, and Astrobiology programs which have led to a decade of great achievements in exploration for NASA.

I, and the Board of Directors, thank you for your support and encourage you to visit our website to keep up on all that we are doing to help make space exploration happen.

Sincerely,

Louis Friedman

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