Astronaut Charles Boden was awarded the FAI Gold Space Medal in 2016. 

Boden has been in orbit four times, and was the head of NASA from 2009 to January 2017. He was made NASA Administrator in 2009, appointed directly by President Barack Obama, and was the first African American to head the agency on a permanent basis.

Born in August 1946, retired Marine Corps Major General Charles Frank Bolden, Jr, spent his life in service to his nation, both on Earth and in Space. 

After joining the US Naval Academy aged 18, he served in Vietnam as a naval aviator and completed more than 100 combat missions. 

After becoming a test pilot in the late 1970s he joined NASA in 1980 and trained as an astronaut. He travelled to orbit four times aboard the Space Shuttle, between 1986 and 1994.

He re-joined the Marine Corps in the mid-90s, and was promoted to Major General in 1998, finally retiring from the Marines in 2003. He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame in May 2006, and made NASA Administrator on 17 July 2009. 

“NASA is uniquely positioned to study our home planet,” he wrote in January 2015. “Earth observation has been at the core of the agency’s work since our founding … our work has global implications.”