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Nomination of Richard Harrison Truly To Be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

April 12, 1989

The President today announced his intention to nominate Richard Harrison Truly to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He would succeed Jame C. Fletcher.

Since 1986 Rear Admiral Truly has served as Associate Administrator for Space Flight at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Washington, DC. Prior to this he was first Commander of the Naval Space Command in Dahlgren, VA, established on October 1, 1984. Rear Admiral Truly began his career in 1959 as a Navy ensign and was designated a naval aviator in 1960. From 1963 to 1965, he was first a student and later an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. In 1965 he was among the initial military astronauts selected to the USAF manned orbiting laboratory program in Los Angeles, CA. He became a NASA astronaut in August, 1969 and was a member of the astronaut support crew and capsule communicator for all three of the manned Skylab missions in 1973 and the Apollo-Soyuz test project in 1975. In 1977 he was a pilot for one of the two-man crews that flew the 747/Space shuttle Enterprise approach and landing test flights. His first flight in space was November 12 - 14, 1981, as the pilot of the space shuttle Columbia, the first manned spacecraft to be reflown in space. August 30, 1983, to September 5, 1983, he was commander of the space shuttle Challenger, the first night launch and landing in the shuttle program.

Rear Admiral Truly has received the American Astronautical Society's Flight Achievement Award, 1977; the Air Force Association's David C. Shilling Award, 1978; and the Society of Experimental Test Pilots' Ivan C. Kincheloe Award, 1978. He has also received the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross and the Meritorious Service Medal; and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.

Rear Admiral Truly received a bachelor of aeronautical engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1959. He was born November 12, 1937, in Fayette, MS. He is married and has three children.

George Bush, Nomination of Richard Harrison Truly To Be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/248223

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