Victoria Jaggard
Sarah Bahr | The New York Times
Victoria Jaggard remembers the moment she knew she wanted to spend her life writing about space: It was in May 2008, and she was at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, covering the Phoenix lander’s arrival on Mars.
“Just the electricity in the room and the energy of everybody as they’re holding their breath, crossing their fingers, really, really hoping that this multimillion-dollar thing that they built lands safely on another planet,” said Ms. Jaggard, who was National Geographic’s senior space editor at the time. “From that point, there was no going back.”
In the years since, Ms. Jaggard has covered the last space shuttle launch, in 2011; the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing; and the 2024 total solar eclipse. And last month, she secured her status as the cool relative at Thanksgiving, with a new job as The New York Times’ space editor.