Vanessa Wyche Acting NASA Associate Administrator
Keith’s note: Vanessa Wyche Acting NASA Associate Administrator just sent this out: “NASA Team Members, Dr. Makenzie Lystrup, director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, announced that she will leave NASA, effective Friday, Aug. 1.
As center director of Goddard since April 2023, Makenzie also was responsible for guiding the direction and management of multiple other NASA field installations including Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, Katherine Johnson Independent Verification & Validation Facility in West Virginia, the White Sands Complex in New Mexico, and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Texas.
Having served in a variety of science and aerospace civilian and government roles in her career, Makenzie contributed to a variety of NASA’s priority science missions including successful operations of our James Webb Space Telescope and Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer, as well as development of the agency’s Roman Space Telescope, and more. As a planetary scientist and astronomer, Makenzie’s scientific work has been in using ground- and space-based astronomical observatories to understand the interactions and dynamics of planetary atmospheres and magnetospheres – the relationships between planets and their surrounding space environments.
We’re grateful to Makenzie for her leadership at NASA Goddard for more than two years including her work to inspire a Golden Age of explorers, scientists, and engineers. Following Makenzie’s departure, Cynthia Simmons will serve as acting center director Cynthia is the current deputy center director. She previously served as the Director of the Flight Projects Directorate at Goddard and has extensive experience supporting missions for NASA, DoD and commercial space and science missions. We are confident Cynthia is prepared to guide Goddard through this transition.
Before joining the agency, Makenzie served as senior director for Ball’s Civil Space Advanced Systems and Business Development, where she managed new business activities for NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and other civilian U.S. government agencies as well as for academia and other science organizations. In addition, she served in the company’s Strategic Operations organization, based in Washington where she led Ball’s space sciences portfolio.
Prior to joining Ball, Makenzie worked as an American Institute of Physics – Acoustical Society of American Congressional Fellow from 2011 to 2012 where she managed a portfolio including technology, national defense, nuclear energy, and nuclear nonproliferation. Makenzie holds a bachelor’s in physics from Portland State University and attended graduate school at University College London earning her doctorate in astrophysics. She was named an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow in 2019 for her distinguished record in the fields of planetary science and infrared astronomy, science policy and advocacy, and aerospace leadership. She was a National Science Foundation Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Research Fellow spending time at the Laboratory for Atmospheric & Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado, and University of Liege in Belgium. Throughout her time at NASA, Makenzie led Goddard’s workforce, which consists of more than 8,000 civil servants and contractors. Her passion and dedication will leave a lasting impact on the teams and missions she supported. We wish her well in her future endeavors.
Vanessa Wyche Acting
NASA Associate Administrator