Nicola Fox is one of the most brilliant space scientists in the world and surely the most influential, since for just over a year she has held the position of Associate Administrator of the Scientific Missions Directorate. Or what is the same: chief of science at NASA.
Fox is visiting Madrid to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the space agency in our country, which culminated with a visit to the Robledo de Chavela facilities, one of the three key points of its Deep Space Network. Its six antennas receive the signal from the hundreds of missions that NASA has deployed in recent decades throughout the solar system and are one of the key nodes in the missions underway and those to come, including the return of humanity. to the Moon, scheduled for 2026.
The appointment in February 2023 to replace Thomas Zurbuchen caught her by surprise and was something she would not have aspired to, since she considered her position as director of NASA’s Heliophysics division “the best job in the world.” For years, Fox worked on the Parker Solar probe mission, the ship that has come closest to our star and with which we are revealing many of its secrets. She still smiles today when we ask her if she considers that she has “touched” the Sun, while she proudly shows off the pendant with a reproduction of the probe that she wears around her neck.
We spoke with Fox at the temporary residence of the United States ambassador in Madrid, in the middle of a lightning institutional visit, although it is not the first time he has visited Spain.
During the Apollo missions, the Fresnedillas de la Oliva antenna was key to receiving messages from the Moon. What important messages can pass through the antennas of Robledo de Chavela in the nearest future?
Obviously, we need the entire network to receive our data, but I think you are referring to Neil Armstrong’s iconic message upon landing on the Moon that came through Robledo in 1969. We are now preparing missions to return humans to our satellite and certainly in In the next few years we will have communications from its surface again. My personal hope is that we will also send people to Mars and it would be great to receive someone’s voice from there.
Would you pass by these antennas in Spain?
I could stop by here, of course. There is a one in three chance, depending on the time of day and where the Earth is.
Speaking of the Moon, is 2026 still the date to set foot on it again with the Artemis program?
Yes, in September 2025 we will arrive with Artemis 2, with a crew that will orbit the Moon, and in 2026 with Artemis 3, which will land on its surface.
When the first woman steps on the Moon, will she be repairing a stolen opportunity in the past?
I think it can be wonderfully inspiring. It’s really important to inspire young women in particular—but obviously young men, too—to do science and to study STEM careers. I think a lot of times what you need is to see yourself in those roles and that’s difficult if no one who looks like you has done those things before. That is why it is very important to put the first woman, and the first person of color, on the surface of the Moon to inspire people and convey: ‘you can do it.’
But it’s not just for these groups of people, in the space industry the work we do is very diverse and we need people with very different experiences to work together. Because the strongest teams are those with the most diversity. If you only have the same people who think the same, the result you will get will always be the same. We need people with different perspectives, with different ways of thinking, to achieve our goals.
We need people with different perspectives, with different ways of thinking, to achieve our goals.
I have read somewhere that she spent a vacation in Spain when she was a child and that since then she has been inspired by space.
Yes, it was in Marbella. I was three years old and I remember my father, when we were going to bed, he took several objects and told me ‘this is the Sun, this is the Earth, the Moon… and this revolves around this’. She was fascinated and wanted to know more, and he added more planets and objects.
You continue playing with Legos and building rockets. When was the last time you played?
Two weeks ago. I built the Milky Way, an image of the galaxy made with Lego. I have also built a rover moon and the Saturn V rockets. It’s my way of relieving stress. When I’ve had a hard day, or week, and I need to do something to relax, I play with Lego.
When I’ve had a hard day I start building rockets with Lego
Is the Europa-Clipper Mission, destined for the moon Europa, the most inspiring since the time of Voyager?
It’s wonderful. I think that the poem inside and the fact that the plaque includes the word water in all languages, including sign language, makes it amazing. And it also contains the names of thousands of people who will make that 12 million kilometer journey. A very long journey to reach Europa and fly over it to see what is in that ocean beneath the crust and what conditions are necessary for life to emerge on other worlds. I think it is a truly inspiring mission.
Are we really going to run out of the International Space Station in 2030? What will we do without her?
We have a strategy for how we will continue doing science in space after this. It will be in collaboration with the private sector, there are many companies that are building space stations that will not be as big as the International Space Station (ISS), they will be like floating laboratories and we will work with them to use those facilities. We will continue doing the science that we do in microgravity, because we are doing very important things on the space station, understanding physical processes and how to adapt and survive, in order to put people on the Moon, in addition to doing incredible medical research, such as looking for a cure for cancer or see how medications work and which are the best to end diseases.
We will continue doing science in space, thanks to the private sector, after the ISS ceases its activity
How can AI revolutionize the space race?
We use a lot of AI and machine learning at NASA, because we have huge databases that are difficult to manage and find interesting developments. We can use AI to select images that are of particular interest, for example. And also to gather databases. We have more than 20 missions that study our planet and in which we collaborate with other countries, to measure what happens from the surface, from airplanes and from space. AI models are changing our ability to put all this data together and draw conclusions.
What would you say to those who think that the Artemis agreements open the way to turning our satellite into an immense mine?
We have the Artemis agreements, led by NASA, but signed by the main countries in the world, because we want to return to the Moon as a community and not as a country or a solo agency. And one of the aspects that we want to safeguard is the beauty of the Moon, we do not want to practice mining and devastate it. The Moon is very important and many things on Earth are governed by it, but we want to do sustainable and responsible exploration.
AI models are changing our ability to put data together and draw conclusions
Although he failed, Peregrine Mission One was going to put human remains on the Moon and the Navajo Nation complained, because it is a sacred place in their cosmology, how does NASA address these issues?
We are very respectful of people’s cultures and we do not send any human remains on our flights to the Moon.
Recently, they managed to restart the engine of the Voyager Ithe human spacecraft that has flown the furthest from Earth. What did you feel?
I cried. Of course I also cried when they told me that he had stopped communicating and asked how I was doing every day. And when they called me with the news that he was returning, tears came to my eyes.
“I cried when the Voyager I probe came to life”
There are those who wonder why they don’t make all missions like Voyager, because they last forever.
It is true that they last forever. In reality, many of our ships last well beyond the useful life we had planned, but the Voyagers have been in space for 47 years. That’s quite a challenge. We are grateful for every day we get data from Voyager, and I have people ask me why we continue to follow them. Because they are so far away and in a region of space that we have never been to and that would take decades to reach because of how far away it is. It’s a great opportunity, now that New Horizons Pluto has already passed and is in the outer heliosphere, and we have a mission that we will launch next year called IMAP, which will try to obtain an image of that border where the Sun stops having influence and stellar space begins. This will allow us to obtain a measurement from several distant points on Earth and put all the data together.
By the way, there was a magical moment a few months ago when Robledo’s antennas were focused on Voyager I, why is it so interesting?
In that image you can see the six antennas pointing to the same place in space and they seem to be saying “please talk to us.” That pretty much represents how much everyone loves Voyager. Each and every one of the resources we have were put into action to listen to Voyager I, it was the first time they had done something like this.
So, could we update the saying “From Madrid to heaven” to “From Madrid to space”?
Oh, I think so. This infrastructure is extremely important, because we can send incredible missions into space, but if they don’t send the data back there is no point in doing so. This network that allows us to recover data from space is crucial, we could not do science without it.
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