11.24.08
U.S. News and World Report has announced its fourth annual selection of America's Best Leaders, identifying men and women from across the nation who are role models and who cultivate and nourish new leaders to grow up around them.
Maria Zuber, principal investigator for the GRAIL mission to the Moon, is one of two NASA scientists recognized as the first women to lead their own robotic space missions. Zuber, a professor of geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Fiona Harrison, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology who leads the NuSTAR mission, were selected by NASA “ because they are the best," said Alan Stern, a former NASA Science Mission Directorate administrator who was on the selection committee that approved the missions proposed by the two women. "Space science is changing,” he said, “and we now have a number of talented and experienced women scientists who are in a position to lead entire space missions."
The GRAIL mission will fly twin spacecraft in tandem around the Moon to precisely measure and map variations in the Moon's gravitational field. NuSTAR will send a high-powered telescope into orbit to observe the properties of black holes, the mysterious objects at the center of every large galaxy that are so dense even light can't escape from them.
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