NASA appoints Nicola Fox as its first female Science Chief

The world of astronomy and space science have essentially been a male-dominated domain even though women have shown their skills and competence, both in the past as well as the present. Despite, till date, the American space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA, one of the most leading in the field, never had a female Science Chief.  

Fortunately, things have changed on that front recently as NASA appointed Nicola Fox as its first woman Science Chief. So long, she has been a solar scientist for the space agency and had headed the Heliophysics division.  

Besides being named as the Science Chief, Fox will also be appointed as NASA’s associate administrator for the space agency’s Science Mission Directorate. This is a department that oversees all ongoing and upcoming missions and has an annual budget of USD 7 billion. It is responsible for the organisation’s most distinguished initiatives, starting with robotic hunts for past life on Mars to exploring distant galaxies using James Webb Space Telescope. In addition, she will also be in charge of a NASA study committee that was set up only last year to assist the US armed forces in locating, identifying and describing UFOs. Commonly called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, it helps the White House and the Pentagon track mysterious aerial objects that high-ranking US officials see as potential threats to US Airspace.  

For those wondering who Fox succeeds in this new and prestigious role, well, that would be Thomas Zurbuchen, a Swiss-American astrophysicist who has been in charge since 2016 and had only retired in December 2022. In the last two months, in absence of an official Science Chief, Zurbuchen’s former deputy Sandra Connelly was leading the directorate in an acting capacity.  

So far, Nicola Fox has been in charge of the Parker Solar Probe Mission that was studying the sun and analysing how solar winds affect satellites and planets. In fact, in this regard, she had also delivered a famous TED talk called “Touching the Sun” back in 2017. Fox has also studied the key space phenomena and supports situational awareness to protect astronauts, satellites, and robotic missions better. 

For those unaware, before joining NASA, Fox was working at the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland till 2018. She has also served as the deputy project scientist for the Van Alley Probes and the operations scientist for the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Program. Fox is also the author of many notable scientific articles and papers and has delivered science presentations across the globe. Apart from research, she is actively involved with science education and outreach activities. 

Nicola Fox was born and raised in England. She obtained her PhD in space and atmospheric physics from the Imperial College of Science, Technology, and Medicine in London. She had also formerly worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. She has also received several awards from the space agency for outstanding performance.