When Dr. Makenzie Lystrup was sworn in as the brand new director of NASA’s Goddard House Flight Heart final week, she didn’t take her oath of workplace on the Bible or the U.S. Structure, however fairly on a tome revered by area fanatics all over the place: Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot.
The e-book, printed in 1994, is called after an iconic picture of Earth, snapped by the Voyager I probe, that depicts the planet as a small speck smothered by the vacancy of area. That photograph impressed astronomer Carl Sagan to jot down: “Look once more at that dot. That’s right here. That’s house. That’s us.” For a lot of, the e-book serves as a reminder of humanity’s place within the universe and the necessity to protect our house planet, which makes it much like holy scripture for a newly appointed NASA director.
On Thursday, when Lystrup selected to position her left hand on a duplicate of Sagan’s e-book whereas being sworn in by NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson, a photographer captured the second, and NASA Goddard’s social media shared the picture.
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The constitution does not require that government officials be sworn in using a particular text, just that they “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.” Most U.S. politicians and officials end up using the Bible.
But over the years, many officeholders have improvised while taking their oath. In 2018, Mariah Parker was sworn in as a member of the Athens-Clarke County commissioners along with her hand positioned on a duplicate of “The Autobiography of Malcom X.” When former U.S. ambassador to Switzerland Suzi LeVine took her oath in 2014, she put a hand on her Kindle. Keith Ellison, the primary Muslim to be elected to Congress, took his oath in 2007 utilizing the Quran.
Lystrup, who’s a planetary scientist like Sagan, hasn’t publicly defined her alternative of Pale Blue Dot, however Sagan is a revered determine within the area sciences group for his pioneering contributions to area exploration.
Lystrup would be the first feminine heart director of the Goddard House Flight Heart, which features a main campus in Greenbelt, Maryland, in addition to Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, the Katherine Johnson Impartial Verification & Validation Facility in West Virginia, the Goddard Institute for House Research in New York, the White Sands Advanced in New Mexico, and the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Texas.
Goddard is house to the nation’s largest focus of scientists, engineers and technologists devoted to Earth and area science, in response to NASA.
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