With the message of change resonating throughout all corners of the government, NASA, too, finds itself with the unprecedented opportunity to reinvent itself for the 21st century and perhaps reclaim the spark that inspired a generation of engineers and space scientists more than 40 years ago.

In its 50th year, the international year of Astronomy, NASA needs more than an image makeover, it needs a new vision of its role in the political and scientific landscape.

Like the stock market, NASA's success is judged by the public as much by perception as it is by results.

In most cases, the two goals can be made to overlap and be mutually reinforcing.

My vision for the future of NASA is drawn from both the perspective of an inspired citizen and a scientist/educator who broadcasts NASA's unique successes to a world of students who thirst for inspiration.

Looking back at NASA's history, its greatest successes in the public and scientific arena have changed focus over the past five decades since its inception.

Launching astronauts into space and sending them to the moon was an epic project that made NASA come alive before a generation of baby boomers.

The launch of the space shuttle in 1981 reinforced that success.

However, a series of setbacks that included the tragic loss of Challenger and Columbia, combined with the absurd launch cost of the shuttle in today's mission environment, have taken the bloom off of that rose.

I see it in my students' emotional response to the launches and its modest goals of completing the International Space Station.

No longer are our astronauts breaking new ground launching probes or studying the Earth from space. The human space program needs to be re-tasked with a new vision for the future. The $500 million cost of a space shuttle launch threatens to swamp the other areas where NASA has had so much success recently.

NASA's greatest public and scientific successes over the past two decades have come with unmanned probes to other worlds.

It may have started with the startling number of people who made use of a young internet in 1997 to access Mars Pathfinder's first images of the surface of Mars in twenty years.

That is combined with the Voyager-like success of Spirit and Opportunity and their 5-year journey across the surface Mars.

The Galileo spacecraft's illuminating sojourn through the Jupiter system with images that sparked our imagination about the possibility of life on the ocean covered moon, Europa.

That is combined with the public and scientific interest in the ongoing Cassini mission at Saturn and the landing of the Huygens probe on the surface of the atmosphere enshrouded moon, Titan.

I see the excitement and passion that these images invoke in a cross section of my students that spans generations from my traditional age college students to those exploring a second career.

So what vision do I have for the future of NASA? I implore President Obama and the head of his space transition team, Lori Garver, to objectively look at NASA's past successes and plan for the future that circumstances call for.

That means making the bold decision to emphasize robotic exploration at the expense of a human presence in the short term.

There is a generation of Americans ready to have their imagination stoked by astronauts doing something truly new and inspirational like walking on Mars and finding life there.

That would be a game changer.

However, it is a decade or so away at the least.

I do believe we are on the cusp of that discovery on Mars or Europa or another promising candidate. It will, however, require more resources than we have at present.

Innovative robotic probes will have to garner the lion's share of the resources in the short term.

After all, they have produced the great majority of the results in the recent past.

We can't do both things well with the funding available.

The greatest question NASA will answer in the next decade is in fact part of its original charter, are we alone? Perhaps microbes may reside under the Mars' frozen water ice cap.

We will begin to explore that question and others in the near future.

If the search is successful, it will stand out as the single greatest discovery in the history of science.

The other area of great potential for excitement and growth is space tourism.

Real people traveling into space.

I tell my students every semester that every one of them who chooses to go into space will have that chance in their lifetime, probably in the next 20 years.

NASA, however, has rightly ceded this nascent field to the commercial arena with groups like Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic planning civilian launches by early next year.

NASA will share excitement of low Earth orbit with a generation of people enthralled by the thrill of the trip.

Who wouldn't be?

Another arm of NASA's strategic vision for the future will rely on satellites designed to monitor the Earth and its changing climate.

Though the data which drives our understanding of global climate change comes in large part from space, NASA will have to be content to play the role of scientist largely from behind the scenes with less glamorous, but fundamentally important launches of Earth observing satellites.

Lastly, there is the defense aspect of satellite surveillance of planet Earth.

Though I have read recent accounts of NASA working more in tandem with the military establishment, I urge restraint.

It is no doubt tempting to streamline the costs of entering space by having NASA partner with the pentagon on a variety of projects.

This plan, however, puts NASA on the path of losing its unique integrity as a civilian agency dedicated to the exploration of space.

Limitation put on access to new data and technology will also hamper NASA's ability to broadcast its successes to the very public that will fund its future ventures.

In short, NASA's lagging image presents it with a unique opportunity to fundamentally redefine its vision for the future.

Building on past successes set in the framework of today's science and public awareness, NASA can return to its prestigious past.

It can serve this country by inspiring a new generation of young people to be aware of the wonders of the cosmos while supporting the work of Earth scientists as they explore our changing planet.

NASA will become a political and national point of pride, again.

Jon Pedicino, Ph.D., is a professor of Astronomy at the College of the Redwoods in Eureka, CA. He teaches classes in Astronomy focusing on the solar system, the search for life, and the history of space exploration. He will soon attend the upcoming International Symposium on Astronomy and Public Outreach being sponsored by the Vatican Observatory in Rome as an invited participant. 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Galileo's revolutionary work that changed our planetary perspective. It is also the 50th anniversary of the founding of NASA.