Noel W. Hinners, a scientist and leader of other scientists who had been a top official at NASA, including director of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and briefly head of the National Air and Space Museum, died Sept. 5 at a hospice center in Littleton, Colo. He was 78.

The cause was complications from basal cell carcinoma, said his wife, Diana Hinners.

From his youth as an aspiring chicken farmer in New Jersey, Dr. Hinners went on to play a leading role in Americas exploration of space, having a guiding hand in programs that explored Mars, launched the Hubble Space Telescope and landed men on the moon.

After the first manned lunar landing, Dr. Hinners specified the spots where later manned lunar missions would touch down. He chaired the committee that decided which sites could provide the most scientific information.

Heading that panel, and reconciling the many competing views on its decisions, exemplified the administrative and leadership abilities that distinguished Dr. Hinnerss career in space science, exploration and education, in government and out.

His Princeton Ph.D. was in geochemistry, but it was probably his knack for getting the best out of other scientists, and of winning federal support for science and space exploration, that earned him some of the highest honors bestowed by the space agency.

Even though I couldnt do the job, I could get others to do it, was the way he once described his talents in a 2010 NASA oral history. My whole career has been built on just surrounding myself with the best people I could find [and] letting them do their job.

But, he could be tough. If his people did not do the job, he directed, Change them out.

An instinct for diplomacy was part of his skill set. When Dr. Hinners headed Goddard from 1982 to 1987, President Ronald Reagan paid a visit. A discussion turned to the possibility of global warming.

As Dr. Hinners recalled it, the president turned out to believe that any warming was likely the result not of man-made carbon dioxide, but rather of organic molecules from trees.

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Noel Hinners, a top NASA official, dies at 78