NASA’s Johnson Center Appoints First Black Deputy Director

30-year NASA veteran Vanessa Wyche will take on the role.

By NewsOne Staff

Vanessa Wyche was named new deputy director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credits NASA

Black women are continuing to break barriers in the realm of STEM. On Wednesday, NASA announced that Vanessa Wyche has been appointed as the deputy director of their Johnson Space Center; making her the first African-American woman to take on the role, Chron reported.

Wyche has been working at NASA for nearly three decades, the news outlet writes. The 54-year-old started her NASA journey as a project engineer for their space life sciences department. She then went on to hold positions that included the director of Human Exploration Development Support, the assistant director of the Johnson Center, and most recently the director of the center’s Exploration Integration and Science Directorate. In this new role, Wyche will be responsible for overseeing the direction of the Houston-based center which is the epicenter of human space flight research. The center, which is one of NASA’s largest facilities, has a staff made up of nearly 10,000 civil service and contractor workers.

Wyche—a graduate of Clemson University—is excited about taking on the position. “I am incredibly humbled to take on this role at JSC, and also excited to assist Mark with leading the home of human spaceflight,” she said in a statement, according to the news outlet. “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…”

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