'VERY OPTIMISTIC': NASA Administrator Bill Nelson is leveraging his nearly four decades in Congress to lobby hard for additional funding to plug a major hole in the Artemis program to return astronauts to the moon and also give aging facilities a facelift. "We're going to have to have some more money," he told us in a wide-ranging interview this week. "I've suggested to them that a way to do it is in the jobs bill. There's an R&D section of the jobs bill. I am very optimistic because of the support that I've heard directly from senators and congressmen." He is separately trying to secure more money to upgrade NASA centers that he says are falling apart. "I have clearly articulated the need for $5 billion of infrastructure needs for all 10 NASA centers and an additional 10 NASA facilities," Nelson said. "We've even got holes in the roof at the Michoud facility outside of New Orleans where they put together the core of the SLS rocket." From Moscow with … Nelson, who has been on the job about five weeks, is also trying to navigate NASA's enduring but increasingly thorny relationship with Russia, which is now threatening to abandon the International Space Station. But Nelson, who spoke with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Rogozin for the first time last week, doesn't sound too worried yet. "We've seen, for example, just recently they've got some kind of module that they are going to launch to the International Space Station, which I think is a pretty good indication that they're not going to abandon it in four years," he said. China is a tougher challenge, but the NASA boss says he is seeking ways to engage more with Beijing on common space problems, even with the strict legal prohibitions placed on cooperation with Beijing. "We certainly need to cooperate on orbital debris that could strike our space station as well as theirs that they are putting up," he said. "There are areas of cooperation that we can do with China … recognizing the limits under law that have been placed upon us and recognizing also the realities that the Chinese haven't been very transparent." The truth may be out there: These days it almost seems obligatory to ask about UFOs, given all the debate about a forthcoming report to Congress from the director of national intelligence about recent sightings of "unmanned aerial phenomena.'' "A couple of years ago, as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I was briefed on what those Navy pilots saw and I have talked to the Navy pilots," Nelson recalled. "They are quite convinced. And these are realistic folks. This isn't some UFO tin-foil hat kind. These are pilots who locked their radar on it. They tracked and then they saw it move so fast that they couldn't believe it. And then they went and tracked it again, locked their radar on it in a new position. So there's some phenomenon that we need to explain." He said he's put Thomas Zurbuchen, who runs NASA's science directorate, in charge of looking into the reports. "I have had several conversations with him, most recently 10 minutes ago, about this very topic and about what he has been doing on SETI and now what he is further doing in an inquiry to see if we have any scientific explanation for some of this," Nelson said. But why NASA? "NASA is a natural place," said Nelson, who served in the House and Senate from Florida. "Part of NASA's science missions is the search for extraterrestrial life."
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