In a first, NASA to name a woman as the agency’s science chief: Report | World news
NASA has selected a longtime solar scientist who headed the heliophysics division to become the U.S. space agency’s science chief — the first woman named to serve in the role, according to two people familiar with the decision.
Nicola Fox, the former senior scientist on the Parker Solar Probe mission studying the sun, will be named this week as NASA’s associate director for the agency’s Science Advisory Board, sources said. The two, who spoke on condition of anonymity before the announcement was made.
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Fox will lead NASA’s science directorate, a unit with an annual budget of roughly $7 billion that oversees some of the agency’s best-known programs from robotic hunters to life beyond Mars. to explore the distant stars with the James Webb Space Telescope.
He will also oversee a NASA research group created in 2022 to help the US military detect and identify UFOs, or so-called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – the mysteries of the White House and Pentagon officials seen as threats to US airspace.
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Fox will succeed Thomas Zurbuchen, a Swiss-American astrophysicist who has led the project since 2016 before his retirement in December. Sandra Connelly, Zurbuchen’s former deputy, has been leading the executive effort.
NASA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
