Nicola Fox
The US space agency names a woman as its science chief for the first time in history. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced on Feb. 27 that Nicola Fox, a longtime solar scientist, who has led NASA’s Heliophysics Division since 2018, has been named the agency’s Science Mission Directorate’s associate administrator. She was the former project scientist for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission studying the sun. Fox is the second woman to hold that position after former astronaut Mary Cleave.
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Designation
Fox will be named as NASA’s associate administrator for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. She will lead NASA’s science directorate, which has an annual budget of nearly $7 billion, and will oversee some of the agency’s most well-known programs, such as the robotic search for past life on Mars and the exploration of distant galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope, according to Reuters.
NASA chief Bill Nelson was the first to announce Nicola Fox’s appointment through a memo. He praised Fox’s previous works on missions to gain better knowledge of the sun, and the effects of solar wind on satellites and planets. “She has been instrumental in making this complex area accessible to the public,” Nelson said. “Her work already spans so many years of impotence to the agency.”
Other Duties
Fox, as the associate administrator of science, will oversee NASA’s overall science activities, which includes missions and research in astrophysics, heliophysics, Earth science and planetary science. NASA also recently transferred biological and physics sciences research done on the International Space Station to the Science Mission Directorate.
She will also oversee a NASA study group, formed in 2022, to help the US military detect and characterise UFOs, or what we call Unidentified Aerial Phenomena—mysterious objects that US White House and Pentagon officials claim to be a threat to the country’s airspace.
The appointment of Nicola Fox as associate administrator became effective immediately. Thomas Zurbuchen, a Swiss-American astrophysicist, was directorate from 2016 until his retirement in December 2022. Since then, Sandra Connelly, formerly Zurbuchen’s deputy, has been the acting directorate.
