In a first, NASA names woman as its science chief

Nicola Fox

NASA announced on Tuesday that it had picked a long-time solar scientist who heads its heliophysics division to become the US space agency's science chief.

Nicola Fox, former top scientist on the Parker Solar Probe mission studying the sun, was named NASA's associate administrator for the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

A memo to agency employees from NASA chief Bill Nelson, obtained by Reuters, first announced Fox's appointment. He lauded Fox's past work on missions to better understand the sun and how solar wind affects satellites and planets.

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"She has been instrumental in making this complex area accessible to the public," Nelson said. "Her work already spans so many areas of importance to the agency."

NASA later announced Fox's appointment publicly late Monday, saying her new role was effective immediately. 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 programmes from the robotic hunts for past life on Mars to exploring distant galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope.

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