The US space agency NASA will designate a woman as its “science leader” for the first time. An official familiar with the development stated that Nicola Fox, who currently oversees the agency’s heliophysics division, will be named the new chief this week. Fox will be appointed as the agency’s Science Mission Directorate’s assistant administrator for NASA. She will be in charge of NASA’s science directorate, a division with a nearly $7 billion annual budget, and will oversee some of the organization’s most well-known initiatives, such as robotic searches for extraterrestrial life on Mars and the James Webb Space Telescope’s exploration of far-off galaxies, according to Reuters.
Nicola Fox will also be in charge of a NASA study group that was established in 2022
Prior to this, Fox served as the principal investigator on the Parker Solar Probe project, which carried out extensive research on the sun. Fox’s prior voyage to the sun helped NASA Administrator Bill Nelson better understand the sun and how the solar wind impacts satellites and planets. Bill Nelson announced the announcement in an email to NASA employees on Monday. “She has played a crucial role in opening up this complicated topic to the general public. Her work already covers a wide range of crucial areas for the organization.”
She will also be in charge of a NASA study group that was established in 2022 to assist the US military in identifying and detecting UFOs, also known as UAPs—mysterious objects that US White House and Pentagon officials say pose a threat to the nation’s airspace. Thomas Zurbuchen, a Swiss-American astrophysicist who served as director from 2016 until his retirement in December 2022, will be replaced by Fox. Since that time, the directorate has been under the interim leadership of Sandra Connelly, who was originally Zurbuchen’s deputy.
