This is comforting.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, left, swears in Dr. Makenzie Lystrup as director of Goddard Space Flight Center, as NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy looks on Thursday, April 6, 2023, at the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building in Washington.
A top newly appointed NASA official has taken an unconventional oath to assume charge of her duties.
Makenzie Lystrup, who became the first woman in NASA’s history to be appointed the director of Goddard Space Flight Center on Thursday, took her oath on a copy of Carl Sagan’s 1994 book Pale Blue Dot instead of the conventional practice of using the Bible.
While many officeholders across the country have placed their hands on books by Dr Suess, the US Constitution, copies of the Quran or other documents, this seems to be the first time someone was sworn in on a book by Sagan.
“Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space” is a 1994 book by the astronomer inspired by the famous Pale Blue Dot photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe from a distance of about six billion kilometres.
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