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The previous head of the Department of Heliophysics, Nicola Fox, is now NASA's top scientist
Photo: piemags / IMAGO
NASA makes solar researcher Nicola Fox its chief scientist.
Fox will take up her new post with immediate effect, the US space agency said on Tuesday.
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Fox is to head up NASA's Science Directorate, which is responsible for more than a hundred missions, including the exploration of distant galaxies with the James Webb Space Telescope, with an annual budget of seven billion US dollars.
She will also oversee a research group set up in 2022 to work with the US military to discover and identify so-called unidentified flying objects.
Fox has previously headed the Heliophysics department since 2018, which studies the effects of constant solar wind on Earth, for example.
She was instrumental in increasing the impact and awareness of NASA's solar exploration missions, said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Fox succeeds US-Swiss Thomas Zurbuchen, an astrophysicist who previously led the department until his retirement.
Note: An earlier version of the text stated that Zurbuchen headed the post until his retirement. We have corrected this passage.
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