Dr Nicola Fox

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the physicist Dr Nicola Fox, the head of science at NASA. She's leading the space agency in a new, ambitious era of exploration and describes her job as the best in the world and beyond it. At present she's overseeing around 100 missions, managing an $8 billion budget and tackling questions like how do hurricanes form, what can we learn from asteroids, and are we alone in the universe? Her own story starts with that same spirit of curiosity. It began in Hitchin in Hertfordshire, where her dad, himself captivated by the Apollo missions, sparked a childhood fascination with space. She was just eight months old when he lifted her from her cot so she could watch Neil Armstrong take humankind's first steps on the moon.

Presenter1:31

Today, she has a new generation of spacecraft to look after. She says watching them launch is like sending your kids off to college. You know they're going to go and do great things, but it's a big sea change in your life, and you hope your kids will call home. We need our spacecraft to call home. Dr. Nicola Fox, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you so much. So, Nikki, I want to know more about how it feels when you watch a mission launch. I'm imagining an incredibly heightened mix of emotions. What's that blend about?

Dr Nicola Fox2:00

It is a huge mix of emotions, particularly if it's a mission that you have worked on for years, because you've been panicking, you've been stressing, all the things that can go wrong, they haven't gone wrong, and it's on the top of the rocket. And then you stand and you watch the rocket lift off and it's an incredibly proud moment. And then you realize, I'm never going to see that spacecraft again. And so you have like separation anxiety. And you have this sort of sad moment of just... wow, it's gone. And it's the brave one. It's going on the big expedition to do all the amazing things that you've prepared it to do. But there's still that sort of...

Presenter2:25

And go.

Dr Nicola Fox2:37

My life's not going to be the same anymore because even though you're going to do great science with it, all your engineering team is going to go off and work on another mission and you're going to go and work on another mission. And so it really is like post-launch blues. Do you cry? Do you have a girl? Oh, I do cry, particularly if it's a crew launch, just because it's just so inspiring to see it. And I'm so incredibly proud to be associated with it. And so the tears flow.

Speaker 12:45

Work on another

Presenter2:49

Do you cry though? Do you have a cry?

Dr Nicola Fox3:02

Olman

Presenter3:03

So it's emotional watching the launches, but then it must be equally emotional watching the landings. The OSIRIS-REx mission ended in September, and that was a big moment recently. It brought back the first asteroid samples from deep space, the largest sample of its kind ever recovered. That landed in the Utah desert. What was it like watching that?

Dr Nicola Fox3:23

I think it was when we knew there was the command that said the capsules entered Earth's atmosphere. And that's the moment when you go, okay, this is real. And, you know, it's coming down at, I think, about 28,000 miles an hour at that point. It's causing a lot of heat. So essentially, the capsule gets engulfed in a fireball. And hearing the words, parachute has deployed. I think that was the moment that my heart kind of leapt. out of my chest because that's the moment where you're like okay we're good and you saw it stop spinning and at that moment you also know that you're going to have a soft landing i mean it looked like it looked like somebody putting a cup of tea down on the table it just like

Presenter4:05

It just like just came down beautifully. What a relief, Nikki. Or a

Dr Nicola Fox4:09

Okay, then let's

Presenter4:09

Yeah.

Dr Nicola Fox4:09

Go to the music. What's disc number one? So my first disc is Simply the Best by Tina Turner because it has a fond memory. So when I was about 17, my father was on an executive course and he was actually giving one of the lectures. And the team said to him, Oh, you need to have a walk-up song. And so he said, What's a walk-up song basically? And they said, Oh, no, we're just going to play it on when you walk on the stage. And so he said, Oh, I don't know, but my daughter loves Tina Turner. So something by her.

Dr Nicola Fox4:40

And not knowing what his walk-up song was going to be, they played The Best by Tina Turner. And I can just imagine my dad kind of sacheting up onto the stage at that sort of beginning beat and then actually really not realizing that at some point she was going to sing You're Simply The Best. And he was a little bit embarrassed at that point. Every time I hear it, I just have this vision of my dad kind of brooding his way up to Tina Turner.

Dr Nicola Fox5:04

Your sound

Speaker 15:05

Class.

Speaker 25:20

Uh man

Speaker 25:23

Stop down your heart.

Speaker 15:28

I hate on every word you say.

Speaker 15:32

Chairs and balls.

Presenter5:37

The best. Tina Turner. Nikki Fox, the samples brought back by the OSIRIS Rex mission came from an asteroid called Bennu. Now it's four point six billion years old, making it almost as old as the solar system itself. What are you hoping to discover from those samples?

Dr Nicola Fox5:52

Of rocks and sand. It's like a time capsule that you can open and pull out like the clues for what life was like. So, when our planet was forming, you know, before life started here, 25% of the sample will be used immediately by NASA researchers and researchers all over the world. And the other 75% is going to be preserved for future generations. If you think about the Apollo samples, we are just opening some of those samples for the first time now, 50 years after they were taken and returned. And the equipment that we have to be able to analyze those samples is so different from 50 years ago. And so, it really kind of brings home to you the importance of bringing back samples, but also the importance for saving them for future generations to really take advantage of.

Presenter6:39

So let's go back to the beginning of your own story, Nikki. You were born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, in nineteen sixty eight, and your father, Eric, was an engineer at Vauxhall Motors. It's him you credit with introducing you to the wonders of space. How exactly did he do it?

Dr Nicola Fox6:52

So he had followed all of the NASA astronaut programs, Mercury, Gemini, and then of course Apollo. And it was just very important to him that I, in quotes, knew where I was when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. So obviously eight months old, I have no idea. But I know the memory, you know, that he came and gave me a running commentary throughout this. And even, I think I was about three, we were on a

Speaker 17:13

You know that

Dr Nicola Fox7:21

family holiday in Spain and instead of a bedtime story, you know, he had glasses on the nightstand showing me, well, this is the earth, the moon goes round the earth, the earth goes round the sun and you know I I would ask him to tell me more and so over the next few nights we would add other objects from around the hotel room to add other planets and he would often say just imagine what it must be like to work for now.

Presenter7:43

NASA. So it was his passion. But how amazing that he planted these seeds with you and then you took it so far. What did he say when you first got a role at NASA? Because that that happened quite some time ago.

Dr Nicola Fox7:53

Yeah. Yeah, that was straight out of my PhD. I applied for a postdoc at NASA and was selected. And he was extremely proud. And so when I went over for my first visit, my parents sent me this huge bouquet of flowers to NASA. I don't really think they knew who I was, but suddenly this at the security gate, this huge thing of flowers turns up for me. So I was pretty well known with the security guards from my first day.

Presenter8:19

You're an only child. Were you the kind of kid who lived in their own imagination a lot, made up lot of games?

Dr Nicola Fox8:25

To a certain extent, I spent a lot of time building my Lego and I was very meticulous. I think I was probably too meticulous, but you know, if I built like a Lego town, there would be people crossing the road and they would be waving and their head would be looking exactly at the other person that they were waving to, and I would spend ages doing that.

Dr Nicola Fox8:43

It's time to go to the music, Dr. Nikki Fox. Your next track, if you would, number two. What's it going to be? So it's Bon Jovi, Living on a Prayer. I was at, it's actually my Bacherette party years and years ago, and we're out dancing, and Living on a Prayer comes on, and my friend is dancing there, and the guy next to her who's dancing, she said something like, oh, I love this song. And he said, oh, yes, it's my mum's favourite song. She was crestfallen.

Dr Nicola Fox9:08

I had the thought that, you know, oh my goodness, I'm now being likened to someone's mum. And so every time I hear the song, I will snap a picture, you know, if it's on the radio or something, I'll snap a picture and text it to her and she will do the same. So we can be anywhere in the world and immediately think of one another with one note of living on a prayer.

Speaker 19:27

Shit.

Presenter9:28

Uh

Speaker 19:28

Says we got a

Speaker 19:30

Down into a

Presenter9:31

God, it doesn't make a difference if they make it up We

Speaker 19:36

Got each other, and that's love life for love.

Speaker 19:42

We'll give it a shot.

Speaker 19:46

We're halfway there.

Speaker 29:52

Yeah.

Presenter9:52

Take my

Speaker 29:52

I haven't won it out.

Presenter9:58

Bon Jovi and Livin' on a Prayer. Nikki Fox, I want to talk to you about your mother, Doreen, because we've heard so much about your dad. So she worked in a bank and I know that she played a big part in getting you where you are today. Tell me about her approach to bringing you up. In my mind

Dr Nicola Fox10:12

Mum was just a very empowering person and she doesn't get a lot of credit, I think, because you know my dad was the big space enthusiast and therefore it sort of follows that he would be most of the inspiration. But she was kind of that quiet, very steady force that was always there and always had the, you know, you can do whatever you want as long as you work hard enough was kind of her thing. You know, she would give me opportunities. She would make sure I had the opportunity to do whatever I wanted to try. Some things worked, some things didn't. And

Dr Nicola Fox10:48

She may not have dreamt of walking on the moon, but she would make sure that I had every opportunity.

Dr Nicola Fox10:53

that she could provide if I wanted to walk on the moon.

Presenter10:56

So your mum was keen for you to experiment, try things. At school you had ballet and tap lessons, you played the piano to grade eight. I mean, did you ever consider a career in the arts? I know you loved drama.

Dr Nicola Fox11:07

I absolutely love drama and it sounds really duft when I say I either wanted to be a physicist or an actress, but it's true. And she said, Well, I think you should get a degree first, so you've always got something to fall back on.

Dr Nicola Fox11:20

So I did I did physics and at one point I'd said, well, I think I'm going to do this and then I'm going to audition for some drama schools, but then NASA came knocking and so I went to NASA instead. So at what point did you turn towards science?

Dr Nicola Fox11:33

Physics was always a passion, partly because you the astrophysics is a large component of physics, but it was also just the the the mechanics and the the real world piece of it. You know, why does this happen? Oh, well here's an equation for that. And so I really liked physics.

Presenter11:48

And so I

Presenter11:51

It's time for your next piece of music, Dr. Nicky Fox. Your third choice today. What is it and why are you taking it with you to the island?

Dr Nicola Fox11:57

So this one is All My Mum and it is Lara's theme.

Dr Nicola Fox12:02

Doctor Shivago. I mean, as early as I can remember, this was her favourite song. If it came on anywhere, we had to immediately stop and listen to it, and she would like put her hand up and say, Oh, I love this song.

Presenter12:45

Lara's theme from the soundtrack to Doctor Giivago with its composer Maurice Jarre conducting the MGM Orchestra.

Presenter12:53

Nikki Fox, you studied physics at Imperial College in London. Now what do you remember about the transition from school to university? Because I know the the girls' school that you attended was very nurturing. It was it was a positive environment for you. What was it like being in a bigger pond?

Dr Nicola Fox13:06

And

Presenter13:07

Uh

Dr Nicola Fox13:07

So it was a very difficult adjustment actually and one I don't think mentally I was ready for. You know I'd come from a small all-girls school. There were only six of us who did physics for A-levels and so you had really great attention if you didn't understand something there was a teacher who was always going to explain it to you and then I went to Imperial College where you are just an indistinct head in a sea of students. So a competitive environment. There was a very competitive environment and if you're in a study group and you're with people that are like, oh yeah, I got this, I know that, and you think, I don't have that. And there is that fear to speak up. And I realized sort of later in life that I definitely identified with the imposter syndrome.

Presenter13:35

There was a

Presenter13:52

I know that when you got your current role at NASA, Nikki, you've described having what you've called a Wily Coyote moment.

Presenter13:59

I would need to talk me through that.

Dr Nicola Fox14:01

Uh

Presenter14:01

Yeah.

Dr Nicola Fox14:02

Oh my goodness, I did. Because I was obviously very excited about doing the job, but I described it as a mix of total joy and total paralyzing fear. My previous job, I had a wonderful deputy, and I used to liken myself to Wiley Coyote because I'm quick to come up with solutions and quick to want to implement them. And she is very calm and very, very grounded in the way she thinks. And so I would often describe it as I was Wiley Coyote. I'd run off the cliff and she would calmly reach out her hand, grab onto me, pull me back on and say, maybe we should think about this before you leap off the cliff. And so it was just sort of the extension of that metaphor. I no longer had her.

Speaker 114:40

Yeah.

Dr Nicola Fox14:49

Reaching over and stopping me, so I was like, Oh, I'm going, I'm going, I'm just going. That moment in his eyes.

Presenter14:55

Moment in his eyes. The moment of real

Dr Nicola Fox14:57

And the head of science at NASA. Yes. And then, you know, the little Acme sign comes up and down he falls. Yes. So that was.

Presenter14:57

And the head.

Dr Nicola Fox15:04

That was that moment.

Presenter15:06

Yeah.

Dr Nicola Fox15:06

I think we better have some more music, Nikki. Your fourth choice today, what is it? My fourth choice is Danny Boy. I chose it to be sung by Andy Williams because that covers my whole family because my dad always really liked Andy Williams. But Danny Boy reminds me of my grandmother because she would always sing Danny Boy and she sang it beautifully. I actually had it at my wedding. All my bridesmaids walked in to Danny Boy, which I know is an unusual choice for a wedding, but I very much wanted my grandmother, she died many years before, to be somehow present. And that was the way that I did that. And then my son's middle name is Daniel. And when he was, you know, when he was little and I would be rocking him to sleep, I would sing Danny Boy to him. So this one covers the whole family.

Presenter15:56

Good morning.

Speaker 115:57

Danny

Presenter15:58

Be bored.

Presenter16:01

The pie

Presenter16:03

Uh

Speaker 116:03

The pipes are calling

Speaker 116:11

From Glen to Glen

Speaker 116:15

And down the mountain

Presenter16:18

Inside

Presenter16:23

Andy Williams and Danny Boy.

Presenter16:25

So Nikki, for your PhD you researched solar substorms. Now this subject obviously appealed to you, and you do have this enormous affection for the sun, even though I think you've called it an average star. Why do you feel so passionately about it?

Dr Nicola Fox16:41

So our star is just an average star, but it is our star. It's the only one that we know that has the responsibility for sustaining life on a planet. So that makes it, you know, an extraordinarily ordinary star. But the Sun is also a very active star, and so it does have storms and it throws off billions of tons of solar material that can travel towards our planet at millions of miles an hour. So you want to be able to predict and understand what that star can do to you.

Presenter17:09

To us here at Earth. So obviously you found the subject fascinating and you started to research it, you did your PhD, and then in 1995 you presented your research at a conference in Alaska. And I know that proved to be a life-changing moment for you. Tell me what happened. Yeah.

Presenter17:23

Yeah.

Dr Nicola Fox17:23

I had a poster presentation, so I'm standing in front of my poster and I saw a scientist sort of standing off to one side and when everybody else had gone, he came up and I told him about the work and he said, that's really interesting. Would you be at all interested in a postdoc at NASA?

Dr Nicola Fox17:40

So I think bells tolled somewhere in the back of my head and I said probably try to play it cool. Yeah, I could do that. But I inside I'm sort of like screaming. And so that was my sort of ground changing Moment.

Presenter17:53

So it was at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center that you became the operations scientist for the polar mission, and that was set up to measure energy input into the Earth's polar regions. So that meant studying the aurora. Absolutely. The northern lights. And underneath them you met your husband,

Dr Nicola Fox18:09

Adjoin. Gas

Presenter18:10

It's a magical meat cute, that's

Dr Nicola Fox18:11

He was a scientist too. He was a scientist and actually he designed cameras that imaged the aurora from space. And I was out with a couple of friends and we were it was in Sweden.

Dr Nicola Fox18:24

And it was really cold and we were sort of traipsing through and we heard other people talking and so we went over to say hi and stood there and that was where I I met him and then we had this beautiful auroral display. Well anybody would fall in love.

Presenter18:39

Yeah.

Dr Nicola Fox18:39

That's

Presenter18:40

Test. Uh

Dr Nicola Fox18:41

What did you

Presenter18:41

It took

Dr Nicola Fox18:41

Uh

Presenter18:41

Talk about were you talking about the Aurora? Was it quite was it h

Dr Nicola Fox18:43

Was it quite hard?

Presenter18:44

Boom.

Dr Nicola Fox18:44

Science or? Oh yeah, we we're I mean, unashamedly a pair of nerds, absolutely. Um I was asking him about the resolution of his camera actually and um and what wavelengths that it looked at and you know what about if we tweaked it and looked at a different wavelength. Yeah, we had a great conversation. We all have our own love language.

Speaker 118:52

Yeah.

Presenter18:52

Yeah.

Speaker 118:53

And that

Presenter18:59

Yeah.

Dr Nicola Fox19:02

That's absurd music, Nicky.

Presenter19:04

Disc number five. What are we going to hear next?

Dr Nicola Fox19:05

So this is When You Know by Sean Colvin. This is actually my first dance song from my wedding because in the moment I met John under the Aurora I knew.

Speaker 119:16

When you know

Speaker 119:19

But you know

Speaker 119:21

Who you love

Presenter19:24

Can't deny it.

Presenter19:26

Go back.

Presenter19:29

Agiver

Presenter19:32

Or pretend

Presenter19:34

Don't buy it.

Presenter19:37

When it's clear this time you've found the one you never let him go. When you know, Sean Colvin. Nikki Fox, in 2010 you became the project scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018. So the spacecraft is named after Professor Eugene Parker, who correctly predicted the existence of solar wind in 1958, though his work was ridiculed by many scientists at the time. 60 years later the probe is currently flying through the sun's atmosphere where it's collecting data that proves Parker's thesis. I know this mission is very close to your heart. Why?

Dr Nicola Fox20:16

It's the coolest, hottest mission under the sun. But it was the highest priority of science that anyone in the sort of space science community wanted to do. Go into the atmosphere of the star and understand how this connection that we have with our star, you know, how it's sort of powered. But it's hard to fly into the atmosphere of the sun and it took about 60 years, it was 60 years till the launch, for the technology to kind of catch up with our dreams.

Presenter20:19

But

Presenter20:43

So over the next couple of years, the probe is going to get closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft. What does that mean? I mean, how close are we talking?

Dr Nicola Fox20:50

It's actually Christmas Eve of 2024. It's my Christmas present. The spacecraft will pass to within 3.9 million miles of the Sun's surface. Now I realize when I said million, you're immediately thinking, well, that doesn't sound very close. But if I put the Earth and the Sun one metre apart, Parker's solar probe will be four centimetres from the Sun.

Presenter21:15

Yeah.

Dr Nicola Fox21:16

So that is close.

Presenter21:17

I'm finding these numbers mind-blowing. Do you?

Dr Nicola Fox21:21

Yes, I do. Although I'm more used to them now. The one I still find mind-blowing is that at that final flyby, the spacecraft will be traveling at 430,000 miles an hour. That's about 112 miles a second. And you know, I can just about think about 112 miles an hour, but 112 miles a second. So that's like.

Presenter21:42

New York to Tokyo.

Dr Nicola Fox21:43

So in under a minute.

Dr Nicola Fox21:47

And the thing that makes the mission even more challenging is when we go into these close approach, so the sort of the very close cut through through the Sun's atmosphere, often we lose contact with the spacecraft completely because there's a large glowing star in the way. So we will often get a signal from the spacecraft right before it goes into the encounter, and often we have to wait many days to get that signal back. And so the former project manager that I worked with so closely will always send me all I get on my phone is a green heart. And a green heart means it was a green beacon tone, so everything is okay with the spacecraft. And then the last one will tell me that the spacecraft data recorder is full and that means all the instruments worked. So that's how we know that it's good. So yes, it launched in 2018. Five years later, I'm still a nervous rack.

Presenter22:44

Well, and of course, you know, it's it's mission is going well so far, but all being well, it will come to an end in in twenty twenty five. What happens to the spacecraft then?

Dr Nicola Fox22:54

As long as the spacecraft is functioning perfectly, we'll extend the mission and it will continue to take great science until we run out of fuel on the spacecraft. And so unfortunately the spacecraft will start to turn and then all of the very sensitive equipment that is not designed and it will not be able to cope with all that total solar illumination on it. And so the spacecraft will sort of gradually break up into large pieces and then smaller and smaller and smaller and it will eventually become dust that orbits the sun forever.

Presenter23:21

Will you feel sad when when that moment comes when

Dr Nicola Fox23:24

Oh, yes, you have a runtime.

Presenter23:25

Yes, you can run that fuel.

Dr Nicola Fox23:26

It will be terrible, but it's already doing groundbreaking science. And so I know that Gene Parker is smiling down from heaven. You know, Gene was very excited. I actually got to travel out and show him some of the first data that we'd got back. And I just remember him saying, wow, that's what the solar wind looks like. Just beaming, happy of this thing that he predicted. And not only is it right, but he was actually seeing it. And that was a wonderful moment.

Dr Nicola Fox23:56

It's time for your sixth disc, Nikki. What have you chosen? So this one is very related to Parker Solar Probe. This was the one that I played every morning when I was driving on to Kennedy Space Center, doing all the final stuff before launch. And every morning I would listen to Reach Up for the Sunrise by Juranda.

Speaker 224:17

Sunrise, put your hands in to the big sky.

Speaker 224:23

You can touch the sunrise. Feel a new day enter your life.

Speaker 224:31

Reach up for the sunrise to the big sky. You can touch, can touch the sunrise. Feel the new day.

Presenter24:43

Enter your life

Presenter24:46

Reach up for the Sunrise Duran Duran

Presenter24:50

Nikki Fox, in twenty ten your professional life was going brilliantly, but not long after you joined the Parker Solar Probe team, you experienced a terrible personal tragedy. Your husband, John, died suddenly.

Presenter25:02

What happens?

Dr Nicola Fox25:04

So I was away, actually. I was in California at a the sort of the big conference that uh we all go to in December. And I left John with the children. So my daughter was thirteen months old and my son was three and a half. And I went out to an evening meeting and a and a dinner. So I remember, you know, I was walking back through San Francisco and

Dr Nicola Fox25:24

I went to go into Macy's thinking I'll get something for the children. And I put my hand on the door and I had this sort of really

Dr Nicola Fox25:31

Weird feeling like I must go and call home immediately. So, you know, I ran back to the hotel and I called home and John didn't answer. And I thought, oh, it's fine, he's gone to sleep. And then in the morning, I got up and I was getting ready and I was calling home and didn't get any answer at home, left a message, no answer on the cell phone, call work, no answer at work. But I kept calling home and after probably about 45 minutes of me calling, the phone was answered and I just heard this voice say hello. And I thought it was John. So of course I said, oh my god, I've been so worried about you, where the hell have you been? And then there's this sort of pause and then I heard, mummy.

Dr Nicola Fox26:15

and I realized it was my son who of course was not allowed to answer the phone.

Dr Nicola Fox26:19

So he answers the phone and I said, James, and he said, yes. And I said, where's Daddy? And he said, oh, he's asleep. And I said, can you wake him up? And he said, no, he's sleeping by his closet. And so I actually dialed 911. And I mean, I think every emergency vehicle known to man went to my house. But I stayed on the phone with my son to talk him through.

Dr Nicola Fox26:43

Various things, you know, because I still don't know what's happened. And he's only three and a half, and he doesn't know what's happened either. And I knew he was terrified. So, you know, and I, when they told me, okay, the police are on their way, and I said, they can't break down the door. I can't have this image in my son's head. And so I said, okay, I'll get him to open the door. And so I said, because he told me he was hungry. And I said, oh, well, you can't reach the cereal because it's on the high shelf. I said, so I've asked a policeman.

Speaker 126:44

You know, because

Speaker 126:57

This

Dr Nicola Fox27:10

to come over and help you get the cereal down. So I need you to be very brave and go downstairs and unlock the door so the police can come in and help you get some food.

Dr Nicola Fox27:22

And he went down and opened the door and then it turned out that sadly John had died from an aortic aneurysm.

Presenter27:30

I mean, that is an experience that's going to change you. How did it change you?

Dr Nicola Fox27:35

So in in some ways it kind of made me realize that

Dr Nicola Fox27:39

Bad stuff happens to people, you know, and I think that sometimes you can go through life thinking bad stuff happens to other people and then it it happens to you and you know you realize you can survive it. That's one of the other reasons that Parker Solar Probe is so special, because I just started in this role and

Dr Nicola Fox27:57

I literally was saying, how can I survive? And just with this sort of cast of thousands, it felt like, that cared enough to always make sure that I was okay. And then, you know, my kids are amazing. You know, my son at three and a half years old processed grief in the most incredible manner. One night we were driving home and there's a pizza van. And he said, mummy, do angels like pizzas?

Dr Nicola Fox28:22

And so I said, Yes, I'm sure they do, James. I'm really sure they do. He goes, Okay, so we should order one and send it to heaven, and then we can follow the pizza truck.

Dr Nicola Fox28:31

You know, this way of like, maybe the scientific method, again, you know, here's a problem. What can I do to deal with this?

Presenter28:39

I know that you did something very special to commemorate John's life and his contribution to space research. What was it?

Dr Nicola Fox28:46

So we launched the Van Allen probes in 2012 and there's some little balance masses that you put on the spacecraft when you're sort of doing the precision balancing. They're like little plates. And we often engrave them. Mine was engraved and it has his name on it, but it also has Tadaddi from James and Darcy.

Presenter29:11

I think we better go to the music.

Dr Nicola Fox29:12

We better head, yes. So this is Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day. And this was something that when I first when I heard it sort of in the throes of grief, you know, it was a very sad song because they talk about, you know, I walk alone on the empty streets with only my shadow.

Dr Nicola Fox29:31

It just really

Dr Nicola Fox29:32

kind of spoke because that was how I felt. I felt like I'm on my own. And then now I listen to it, it's much more empowering with that thought of I did walk alone and I made it.

Speaker 129:46

I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known Don't know where it goes, but it's only me and I walk along.

Speaker 130:04

I walk this empty street on the boulevard of broken dreams where the city sleeps and I'm the only one and I walk alone

Presenter30:17

Green Day, Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Nikki Fox, the big question for space scientists is, are we alone in the universe? How close, I wonder, is NASA to answering that question?

Dr Nicola Fox30:29

Our planet is sort of the Goldilocks planet. You know, it's not too close, not too far, not too big, not too small, not too hot, not too cold. And it sustains life.

Presenter30:33

An empty bay.

Dr Nicola Fox30:38

Why is that unique? As we start looking in, particularly with the James Webb Space Telescope and looking at these very distant galaxies, you know, we're looking for other stars like ours that maybe have a rocky planet orbiting them with an atmosphere. And that sounds sort of very easy. It's really hard to actually go and look for those things. But we'll have a future mission called Habitable Worlds Observatory that will be designed to literally look for

Dr Nicola Fox31:05

Planets that could sustain life. How clearly do you kind of envision that? And how far off do you think all that is? Having the tools that we need to actually sort of search for planets that could be Earth-like is not too far away. The ability to go and visit them is obviously

Dr Nicola Fox31:23

I don't know how you think about that, but you're talking millions, billions of light years away. Kind of taking it back into the theoretical space. We are back into theoretical space. We're probably handling well.

Presenter31:27

Mm-hmm.

Presenter31:29

We are probably handling well. Yes. Better than me. Now, it's time to send you off somewhere a little bit closer to home than you're often thinking about, the desert island. Do you think you'll spend time contemplating? I know I will contemplate.

Dr Nicola Fox31:44

I will spend a lot of time looking at the sky because as soon as you go to like the desert islands or the you know places far away from a lot of light pollution, man, you see so many stars. So many stars.

Presenter31:46

Yeah.

Presenter31:56

Well, I think we'd better give you one more track before we send you off to your island, Nicky. Your last choice to day. What's it gonna be?

Dr Nicola Fox32:01

This is my daughter's choice and so it had to be a Harry Style song and she picked a couple and then she said no I really want to do Canyon Moon. She said because whenever I hear it it just makes me smile and I think of you and so I thought oh well that's that's I'm just gonna take that very nice sentence before it changes and I'm just gonna go with Canyon Moon because it makes her smile.

Dr Nicola Fox32:27

Sky never looked so blue, so hard to leave it.

Dr Nicola Fox32:32

That's what I always do.

Speaker 232:34

So I keep thinking back to The time under the canyon move

Speaker 232:45

What's happening waiting?

Speaker 232:47

Doors yellow, broken blue I heard Jenny saying

Speaker 232:52

Go get the kids from school.

Presenter32:54

HARRY STILLES AND CANYOMON. So, Nikki Fox, the time has come. I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and another book of your choice to take on this mission. What will your book be?

Dr Nicola Fox33:06

My book is The Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan.

Dr Nicola Fox33:10

You know, there's so many great images of space, there's so many great images of our planet, but that image from the Voyager 1 spacecraft, it turned back on its journey all the way out there and took this image of this tiny, tiny planet that's actually our planet. And, you know, Carl Sagan called it the pale blue dot, but it's that feeling of, you know, that's us, that's home, and how sort of fragile it is. It's a tiny little dot in space. And so I've always loved the book and I've loved the image that that conjures up. So I would take that book with me.

Presenter33:44

So I

Presenter33:46

The perfect desert island read. You can also have a luxury item. What will that be?

Dr Nicola Fox33:50

Oh, my luxury item please. I would take a big box of Lego. This is actually my stress relief. And there are times when I've had a you know tough day and I will come in and say I just need to build something. And I had a particularly tough week at work a few weeks ago and I built the entire Titanic. So that's when you know it's a

Presenter34:07

That's when you know it's been a bit of a wait.

Dr Nicola Fox34:08

Yes, there's it just really it's really stress relieving for me.

Presenter34:12

Need to explain Lego to me, because you can have the biggest box going.

Presenter34:15

What a dream. Thank you. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves fair?

Dr Nicola Fox34:21

Oh, that was a really, really, really tough decision. But in the end, I went with Green Day and Boulevard of Broken Dreams because it's my anthem.

Presenter34:30

Doctor Nicola Fox. Thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you so much.

Presenter34:55

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Nikki. I can pretty much guarantee she's going to love the constellations she'll be able to see from the island. We've cast away many space enthusiasts, including scientist Maggie Adarin Pocock and astronauts Tim Peake and Chris Hadfield. And you'll also find the astronomer Carl Sagan, the author of Nikki's castaway book, in our back catalogue too. You can find those episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Paula McGinley. The series editor is John Gowdy. Next time my guest will be the artist, Marina Robramovich. I do hope you'll join us.

Dr Nicola Fox35:54

Uh

Speaker 235:54

Are you fed up with the news? Here was a creature of older than

Speaker 135:59

Prime Minister has had a busy few weeks photoshopping the heads of dogs onto the body of a lobster. Woke his head rolling his trolley swiftly as it screamed and clawed at eyes that had seen the unseeable forever and ever. Up next, it's Dan Witten. The skewer.

Dr Nicola Fox36:17

Yeah.

Speaker 136:17

The news chopped and chanted. Labour's shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has promised to get Britain Ferrero Roche chocolates if the party wins the next general election.

Presenter36:28

Everything you need to know before. The sycamore once crowned the best tree in England was deliberately felled.

Speaker 136:29

Thing you need to know.

Speaker 236:31

Heard it before.

Speaker 236:38

Did you chop down this tree? I scrapped it. The biggest story.

Speaker 136:40

With a twist! You were about to enter here! Order!

Speaker 236:47

Oh man.

Speaker 136:47

Yeah.

Dr Nicola Fox36:52

Listen now, give us some sense.