for American space exploration. According to the Washington Times, those challenges were: "(1) To seek evidence of life elsewhere in the solar system where liquid water existed in the past or exists now. (2) To study planets around other stars (the Sun being the star of our planetary system). (3) To send a spacecraft to a nearby star, something we don't know how to do today - "but in 1900 we didn't know how to fly either." (4) To develop a plan of human exploration beyond Earth orbit." Carnegie Institution Following his time at NASA, Huntress became the director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Geophysical Laboratory in the fall of 1998, and remained in this position until his retirement in 2008. His role there continued to be strategizing and lobbying for space exploration. In 2004 he was head on a report, "The Next Steps In Exploring Deep Space", which proposed a vision for a "stepping stone" approach for incremental exploration of space by humans using the Moon, Lagrange Points, Near-Earth Objects, and Mars. His research has included the evolution of interstellar medium, and pre-biotic organic chemistry on early Earth. He is now Director Emeritus of the Geophysical Laboratory. While at Carnegie, he also served as the president of The Planetary Society from 2001 to 2006, having served as the society's vice-president in 2000. Neil de Grasse Tyson took over from Huntress in the position of the society's vice-president. Additional affiliations for Huntress include the International Academy of Astronautics, the Royal Astronomical Society, and the National Academies, where he is a lifetime associate. NASA Advisory Council While at Carnegie, Huntress continued to serve on the NASA Advisory Council, where he became an outspoken critic of reductions in the growth of NASA's science budget. For example, Huntress opined on the International Space Station, stating that, "I don't place the space station in the critical path for sending humans to the moon ... And frankly the science community will tell you it was never a very useful platform for doing science at all. It's not in the right orbit for lots of things, and it's a very noisy environment." As a result of his views, he was asked by then-administrator Michael D. Griffin to resign his position with the council in August 2006. On November 2, 2009, Huntress returned to the Council, and was named by administrator Charles Bolden as chair of