NASA has hired Vanessa Wyche, a 30-year NASA veteran, to serve as deputy director of the Johnson Space Center.
She is the first African American person to hold this title.
“I am incredibly humbled to take on this role at JSC, and also excited to assist Mark with leading the home of human spaceflight,” Wyche said in a statement. “I look forward to working with the talented employees at JSC as we work toward our mission of taking humans farther into the solar system.”
Wyche began her career at NASA in 1989 as a project engineer and later became acting director of Human Exploration Development. Support.
“Vanessa has a deep background at JSC with significant program experience in almost all of the human spaceflight programs that have been hosted here,” said Mark Geyer, head of the Space Center. “She is respected at NASA, has built agency-wide relationships throughout her nearly three-decade career and will serve JSC well as we continue to lead human space exploration in Houston.”
NASA was in the news in 2017 on the heels of the box office hit film “Hidden Figures,” which told the story of three African American women, Mary Jackson; Dorothy Vaughan; and Katharine Johnson, who were among several women who were pivotal to the success of NASA’s space missions, but whose work went unnoticed.
