NASA Administrator Bill Nelson was in Maine on Wednesday to meet with the makers of spacecraft components and with students hoping to one day join them.
Later, at the Brunswick offices of Maine rocket company bluShift, Nelson said he liked what he saw.
“You’re going to launch rockets from the coast of Maine into a polar orbit, and you’ve got a lot of entrepreneurs here that are ready to go, and bubbling up with new ideas. So, it’s quite exciting,” he said.
Nelson then toured a new test stand at Brunswick Executive Airport, where bluShift is preparing this fall for a minute-long firing of its next rocket engine.
Nelson’s visit also came one day after the first meeting of the board of a new, state corporation that’s to marshal Maine’s efforts to become a significant player in space exploration.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.