Election Section

MOFFETT FIELD — Veteran NASA manager G. Scott Hubbard has been appointed director of the space agency’s Ames Research Center, officials announced Thursday. 

Hubbard most recently served as deputy director for research at the Silicon Valley center. He replaces Henry “Harry” McDonald, who will join the faculty at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. 

As director, Hubbard will be responsible for all aspects of Ames, which focuses on new technologies related to NASA’s missions. 

As deputy director for research, Hubbard helped establish NASA’s Astrobiology Institute and served as its initial director. In other assignments, he was project manager of Ames’ portion of the 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission and NASA manager of the 1998 Lunar Prospector Mission. 

In 2000, after the failure of two missions to Mars, he was named the first Mars Program director at NASA headquarters in Washington. 

“After the failure of the Climate Orbiter and the Polar Lander, Scott was brought to Washington to help get our Mars exploration program back on track,” said NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe. “Today, we enjoy unprecedented success in exploring the Red Planet, making discoveries no one would have thought possible a few years ago.” 

Hubbard received his bachelor’s degree at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and completed his graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. 

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On the Net: 

NASA Ames Research Center: http://www.arc.nasa.gov/