National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Headquarters
Washington, DC 20546-0001

May 16, 2022

Reply to attn. of: Office of Communications

John Greenewald
Black Vault
27305 W. Live Oak Road
Castaic, CA 91384

Re: NASA FOIA Tracking Number 22-HQ-F-00488

Dear John Greenewald:

This is our final response to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), dated April 22, 2022, and received in this
office on April 25, 2022. Your request was assigned the above-referenced tracking number.
You seek:

All emails sent to/from (bcc'd or cc'd) NASA Administrator Bill Nelson (include ALL
email addresses utilized by Mr. Nelson), which contain the following keywords:
"Airborne Object"
and/or
AOIMSG
and/or
AOIMEXEC
and/or
"Unidentified Aerial"
I agree to limit the scope of the search to records dated December 1, 2021, through to
the date of processing this request. Also, please ensure that NIPR, SIPR and JWICS
communications are searched, should that apply.

In response to your request, we conducted a search of NASA’s Office of Information

Technology, the Office of the Administrator, and the Office of Protective Services using the
search terms provided above. Those searches identified records responsive to your request.
We reviewed the responsive records under the FOIA to determine whether they may be
disclosed to you. Based on that review, this office is providing the following:
 2

12 page(s) are released in full (RIF); 1

2 page(s) are released in part (RIP);
page(s) are withheld in full (WIF);
page(s) are duplicate copies of material already processed;
page(s) not provided were referred to another entity.

NASA redacted from the enclosed documents certain information pursuant to the following
FOIA exemptions:

Exemption 6, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6)

Exemption 6 allows withholding of “personnel and medical files and similar files the
disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6)(emphasis added). NASA invokes exemption 6 to protect work cell
phone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Fees

Provisions of the FOIA allow us to recover part of the cost of complying with your request. In
this instance, because the cost is below the $50 minimum, there is no charge.

Appeal

You have the right to appeal my action regarding your request. Your appeal must be received
within 90 days of the date of this response. Please send your appeal to:

Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Executive Secretariat
ATTN: FOIA Appeals
MS 9R17
300 E Street S.W.
Washington, DC 20546

Both the envelope and letter of appeal should be clearly marked, “Appeal under the Freedom
of Information Act.” You must also include a copy of your initial request, the adverse
determination, and any other correspondence with the FOIA office. In order to expedite the
appellate process and ensure full consideration of your appeal, your appeal should contain a
brief statement of the reasons you believe this initial determination should be reversed.
Additional information on submitting an appeal is set forth in the NASA FOIA regulations at
14 C.F.R. § 1206.700.

1
All page counts are approximate numbers.
 3

Assistance and Dispute Resolution Services

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] or (202)
358-4464. For further assistance and to discuss any aspect of your request you may also
contact:

Stephanie Fox
Chief FOIA Public Liaison
Freedom of Information Act Office
NASA Headquarters
300 E Street, S.W., 5P32
Washington D.C. 20546
Phone: 202-358-1553
Email: [email protected]

Additionally, you may contact the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS) at the
National Archives and Records Administration to inquire about the FOIA mediation services
it offers. The contact information for OGIS is as follows: Office of Government Information
Services, National Archives and Records Administration, 8601 Adelphi Road-OGIS, College
Park, Maryland 20740-6001, e-mail at [email protected]; telephone at 202-741-5770; toll free at
1-877-684-6448; or facsimile at 202-741-5769.

Important: Please note that contacting any agency official including myself, NASA’s Chief
FOIA Public Liaison, and/or OGIS is not an alternative to filing an administrative appeal and
does not stop the 90 day appeal clock.

Sincerely,

Alyssa Bias
Government Information Specialist

Enclosure(s)
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Fwd: Christmas Eve reading
From: Nelson, Bill (HQ-AAOOO) <IO=EXCHANGELABS/OU=EXCHANGE ADMINISTRATIVE
GROUP
BOHF23SPDLT)lCN=RECIPIENTS/CN=3FA5333M 119409284AC2C5CFOB853
W>
To:
Sent:
Received: December 24,2021 12:57:00 PM EST

Begin Forwarded Message:

From: "McGuinness, Jackie (HQ-NAOOO)" <[email protected]>

Subject: Christmas Eve reading
Dale: 24 December 2021 12:09
To: "Nelson, Bill (HQ-AAOOO)" <[email protected]>, "Bill Nelson"
Cc: "Etkind, Marc R. (HQ-NAOOO)" <[email protected]>

Hi sir - Happy Christmas Eve!

Here <https:/Igcc02.safelinks.prolection.outlook.coml?url=https:/Iwww.cnn.comlvideosltech/2021/12124/nasa-space-
lelescope-bill-nelson-newday-
vpx.cnn&[email protected] 108d9c7001 fee17005d45845be48ae8140d43da96d
d 17bl010163775962561173961 0lUnknownlTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWljoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQljoiV2luMzliLCJBTil61k1 ha
WwiLCJXVCI6MnO=13000&sdata=n05tdZIG3Cj36hSQiKwjvdlpIGT3tY1 DXDqGTwdPCFY=&reserved=O> is a link to
your CNN interview this morning.

Your JWST op-ed ran in USA Today today, linked here

<https:/Igcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.coml?url=https:/Iwww.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnists/2021/12124/n
asa-james-webb-space-telescope-
major/8914279002/&[email protected] c62ea54ac5f7e1 08d9c7001 feeI7005d45845be48ae814
Od43da96dd 17bl010163775962561173961 0IUnknownlTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWljoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQljoiV2luMzliLCJ
BTil61k1 haWwiLCJXVCI6MnO=13000&sdata=F4WvfF19NYeCp+pEzH3V9kVnMsF02dui2M/zhiN8BkO=&reserved=0>.

And the piece you requested from the Guardian

<https:/Igcc02.safelinks.protection.outlook.coml?url=https:/Iwww.theguardian.comlscience/2021/decl24/bill-nelson-
nasa-administrator-
interview&[email protected] c62ea54ac5f7e1 08d9c7001 feeI7005d45845be48ae8140d43da96
dd 17b1010163775962561173961 0IUnknownlTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWljoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQljoiV2luMzliLCJBTil61k1 ha
WwiLCJXVCI6MnO=13000&sdata=KsjZ31w5h2wC4WE8aZrlB+8v+kePPfznaMNSzgaiczO=&reserved=O> is below.

Best,
jackie

'We're all citizens of planet Earth': former astronaut Bill Nelson on his mission at Nasa (The Guardian)

Nasa's new administrator discusses the space race with China, UFOs, billionaire 'astronauts' and building a 'mission
control' for climate change

David Smith in Washington

Fwd_ Christmas Eve reading

Fri 24 Dec 2021 03.00 EST

When Apollo 11 launched in July 1969, Bill Nelson was an army lieutenant on leave behind the iron curtain, listening
with colleagues to the BBC on shortwave radio.

"There were three young Americans standing on the hills overlooking Budapest, screaming at the top of our lungs,
cheering as that rocket lifted off," Nasa's new administrator recalled in a video interview.

By the time Neil Armstrong stepped on to the lunar surface, Nelson was at a London hotel, watching on a grainy black
and white TV at three in the morning. "This was all extremely fascinating to me and never in a million years did I think
that I was going to end up being able to fly in space. Much more so, never in a million years would I have thought that I
would try to offer some leadership to Nasa."

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Nelson, who at 79 is two months older than Joe Biden, was the first member of the House of Representatives to go
into space. He went on to serve as a Democratic senator for Florida for 18 years. In May he was appointed by Biden to
lead Nasa and earlier this month he was in the spotlight when Vice-President Kamala Harris chaired her first meeting
of the National Space Council.

Nelson's priorities include the $10bn James Webb Space Telescope, a successor to the Hubble telescope aiming to
launch on Saturday after years of costly delays. Astronomers are on edge because a lot could go wrong. "There are
some 300 things that have to work perfectly on this telescope," Nelson says. "And that's after a successful launch."

Then there is Nasa's high stakes effort to retum to the moon after half a century. The Artemis programme, a sequel to
Apollo, aims to put astronauts back on the lunar surface in 2025 or soon after, establishing the first "long-term human-
robotic presence" on and around the moon and laying the groundwork for the first crewed mission to Mars in the late
2030s.

"Why the moon?" Nelson says. "Because the goal is Mars. What we can do on the moon is leam how to exist and
survive in that hostile environment and only be three or four days away from Earth before we venture out and are
months and months from Earth. That's the whole purpose: we go back to the moon, we learn how to live there, we
create habitats."

In 2023 a probe will dig down at the south pole of the moon to leam how much water there is beneath the surface.
"Because if there's water, then we've got rocket fuel, we've got hydrogen and oxygen."

Last time around the US was spurred to the moon by the Soviet Union, which had beaten it to putting the first satellite
(Sputnik) and first person (Yuri Gagarin) in space.

Today the principal rival is China, which Biden has made an organising principle of his presidency, and space is no
exception. China established its own space station with alacrity and is only the second country to have landed a rover
on Mars.

Is a new space race underway and, on the basis that competition breeds success, might that be a good thing? ''Yes to
the space race; Nelson replies. "I think their intention is to bring back a sample from Mars earlier than ours. I think
their intention is to try to land on the moon before we land. The facts are the facts and America better pay attention.

Fwd_ Christmas Eve reading

"But is that a good thing? Not really. What would be a belter thing is il they were a partner like Russia has been since
1975."

Leaders of the American and Russian space agencies had a constructive relationship during the later part of the cold
war; can Nelson establish a similar channel to his Chinese counterpart? "II I had my druthers I would, but you can't
have a relationship if the other party doesn't want to have a relationship. It takes two to tango. They have indicated no
interest in the two of us doing the tango."

He adds: "They're good but they're secretive. They're not collaborative. They're not transparent."

All 12 people who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972 were white American men. In his public remarks,
Nelson typically makes a point of saying that Artemis will put the first woman and first person of colour on the moon.
Nasa has also produced a graphic novel, First Woman, about a fictional character called Callie Rodriguez who
achieves both distinctions.

What impact does he think that moment would have on girls and children of colour around the world? "Well, look what
female and minority astronauts have already done. It's caused liltle girls to dream dreams that they didn't ever think
possible before. Same thing with minorities."

But for now many of the headlines are stolen by billionaire white men such as Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elan
Musk. Nelson does not seem perturbed about Nasa's thunder being stolen, however.

"I think it's great they are spending their money advancing technology. They are opening up press attention and
excitement by American people and then, when you add that to the Nasa programme, of which SpaceX is a big part
now, it's all the more exciting."

Musk's SpeceX is developing a "Starship" lunar lander that can carry a gamechanging 100 tons of cargo. Enough to
start building a moon base? "I hope so, but it hasn't flown." An unsuccessful legal challenge by Bezos's rocket
company, Blue Origin, caused a delay but Nasa is still targeting February for the first test flight of its moon rocket, the
Space Launch System.

Raised in Melbourne, Florida, Nelson studied at the University of Florida, Yale and University 01 Virginia Law School
and served on active duty in the army. He began practising law then went into politics, lirst in the Florida state
legislature, then in the US Congress.

In 1986 he went from the Washington swamp to the stars on the space shultle Columbia, orbiting the Earth 98 times
over six days and conducting 12 medical experiments, including the first American stress test in space. (Just 10 days
after he landed, another shuttle, Challenger, launched and almost immediately exploded, killing all seven crew
members.)

Michael Collins, the Apollo 11 command module pilot, once described Earth as "blue, white, very shiny ... such a
beautiful tiny thing, nestled in this black velvet of the rest olthe universe". William Shatner, 90, famed for playing
Captain Kirk in Star Trek, rode aboard a Blue Origin rocket in October to become the oldest person in space and was
struck by "the covering of blue, this sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue that we have around us".

Nelson, too, has vivid memories of seeing Earth lrom afar. "It is so beautiful. It is so colourful. It is suspended in
nothing. There's home and yet it looks so fragile. That experience informed a lot of my public life because I wanted to
be, when I returned, a better steward 01 our planet.

"So I think you can just basically boldly say I became more of an environmentalist when I went into space, and that has
informed my environmental record now going on 44 years of public service.

Fwd_ Christmas Eve reading

"It also struck me as a politician that when I looked, as we orbited the Earth every 90 minutes, I didn't see racial
divisions and I didn't see religious divisions and I didn't see political divisions - the things that bedevil us here on the
face ofthe Earth. What I saw, we were all citizens of planet Earth, and that's informed my public service as well."

By way of example he describes Nasa as "the point of the spear" on the climate crisis, designing, building and
launching instruments that measure the delicate balance of the environment. Nelson reveals that the agency is
planning to set up a "mission control" for climate change at a still-to-be-determined location.

"We're going to allow the public to access it virtually. We're going to encourage state and local governments as well as
our fellow agencies and the federal government to access the data and make it easy for everybody so they can have
informed decisions."

Whatever the shortcomings of Cop26, Nelson believes there has been a perceptible shift in public and political opinion
on the issue. He notes that Republican senator Ted Cruz - who was the first to call him when news of his nomination
for Nasa was leaked by the White House - "was an absolute out and out climate denier and you don't hear him saying
that that much now".

Another subject that has gone increasingly mainstream in Washington is unidentified flying objects. In June a report
found that although intelligence officials do not believe aliens are responsible for dozens of accounts of unidentified
aerial phenomena (UAP), they cannot fully explain what is.

Nelson comments: "You've seen those films now made public. They [navy pilots] know they saw something. What is
it? I don't know. Is it an adversary on Earth that has that kind of technology? I hope not.

"Do I think that there is life in the universe? The answer to that is clearly I do and we are searching for it. How can I
limit a universe that is so big that I cannot see how big it is, where we are in a galaxy with billions if not trillions of stars
and there are additional billions if not trillions of galaxies, and the universe is expanding?"

He adds with a chuckle: "Like people that tried to limit Copemicus and Galileo that the Earth didn't revolve about the
sun, that everything revolved around the Earth. So, you get the drift."

What first contact with an alien civilisation would mean for humanity has long been the stuff of science fiction. But
politicians take it seriously. After a conversation with his American counterpart in 1985, Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev recalled: "President Reagan suddenly said to me, 'What would you do if the United States were suddenly
attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?' I said, 'No doubt about it.' He said, We too.' So that's
interesting."

Nelson, astronaut tumed senator turned secretary of space, must be hoping that China's Xi Jinping feels the same
way about saving the planet from greenhouse gases.

Jackie McGuinness

Press Secretary

Office of the Administrator

C: (b) (6)

Fwd_ Christmas Eve reading

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Meeting
From: Nelson, Bill (HQ-AAOOO) <lO=EXCHANGELABS/OU=EXCHANGE
ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP
(FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=3FA5333A4119409284AC2C5CFOB
8534D-NELSON, C W>
To: [email protected]
Sender: Ratnasamy, Kayla R. (HQ-AAOOO) <IO=EXCHANGELABS/OU=EXCHANGE
ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP
(FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=5ECCDC78F2064815A597591 B357
570F1-RATNASAMY,>
Sent: March 29, 202211 :15:34 AM EDT
Received: March 29, 2022 11 :15:34 AM EDT
Attachments: Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Meeting

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon

Meeting
Attachment

1. Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Meeting

Type: text/calendar
Size: 732 bytes

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon

Meeting
Attachment #1
Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Meeting

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon

Meeting
Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon
Meeting
Bias, Alyssa K. (HQ-NA040)

Subject: Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Meeting

Location: The Administrator's Office

Start: Tue 4/12/2022 9:30 AM

End: Tue 4/12/2022 10:00 AM
Show Time As: Tentative

Recurrence: (none)

Meeting Status: Not yet responded

Organizer: Ratnasamy, Kayla R. (HQ-AA000)

1
Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Meeting
From: Nelson, Bill (HQ-AAOOO) <lO=EXCHANGELABS/OU=EXCHANGE
ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP
(FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=3FA5333A4119409284AC2C5CFOB
8534D-NELSON, C W>
To: [email protected]
Sender: Ratnasamy, Kayla R. (HQ-AAOOO) <IO=EXCHANGELABS/OU=EXCHANGE
ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP
(FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=5ECCDC78F2064815A597591 B357
570F1-RATNASAMY,>
Sent: April 5, 2022 8:58:54 AM EDT
Received: April 5, 2022 8:58:54 AM EDT
Attachments: Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Meeting

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon

Meeting
Attachment

1. Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Meeting

Type: text/calendar
Size: 495 bytes

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon

Meeting
Attachment #1
Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Meeting

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon

Meeting
Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon
Meeting
Bias, Alyssa K. (HQ-NA040)

Subject: Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Meeting

Location: The Administrator's Office

Start: Tue 4/12/2022 9:30 AM

End: Tue 4/12/2022 10:00 AM
Show Time As: Tentative

Recurrence: (none)

Meeting Status: Not yet responded

Organizer: Ratnasamy, Kayla R. (HQ-AA000)