Nicola Fox Just Became the First Female Head of Science at NASA
NASA just picked a solar scientist to become the agency's science chief. Nicola Fox, the former top scientist on the Parker Solar Probe mission, has been named as NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate.
In her previous role, Fox lead groundbreaking research on the sun, including a better understanding of solar wind and how it affects planets and satellites. Now, she'll be leading the charge overseeing some of the agency's most exciting and high-profile missions.
But that's not all - Fox will also be heading up a NASA study group on UFOs (that’s Unidentified Flying Objects). NASA chief Bill Nelson praised Fox's appointment, saying that she has been instrumental in making the complex world of heliophysics accessible to the public. With an annual budget of roughly $7 billion, the Science Mission Directorate plays a vital role in NASA's efforts to explore the mysteries of the universe, from probing for past life on Mars to studying distant galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope.
