Dr. Makenzie Lystrup, who guided the direction and management of the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, resigned as director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, according to an announcement made Monday. Lystrup’s last day will be Aug. 1.

“The work done here is central to NASA, our national science infrastructure, and United States competitiveness and leadership,” she said in a statement released just after her resignation was made public. “I also came knowing that change and evolution were needed. I know that has often been challenging,” Lystrup continued.

“We are not in a sprint or a marathon,” she wrote in a letter to fellow workers. “It’s a relay race, in which each of us is handed a baton … and after our run, we hand it off to another … I very much believe in Goddard and its mission, and I will be championing the next leg from the stands.”

Lystrup has been director at Goddard since 2023. Her roles at NASA include leading or contributing to the James Webb Space Telescope, Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer, and the development of the Roman Space Telescope.

Lystrup led Goddard’s workforce, which consists of more than 8,000 civil servants and contractors. Before joining NASA, she served as senior director for Ball’s Civil Space Advanced Systems and Business Development, where she managed new business activities for NASA, NOAA, other civilian U.S. government agencies, and academia and science organizations. In addition, she led Ball’s space sciences portfolio.

She was an American Institute of Physics – Acoustical Society of American Congressional Fellow from 2011 to 2012, where she managed a portfolio including technology, national defense, nuclear energy, and nuclear nonproliferation.

Lystrup has a bachelor’s in physics from Portland State University and earned a doctorate in astrophysics from University College London. She was a National Science Foundation Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Research Fellow spending time at the Laboratory for Atmospheric & Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado, and University of Liege in Belgium. As a planetary scientist and astronomer, Lystrup’s scientific work has been in using ground- and space-based astronomical observatories to understand the interactions and dynamics of planetary atmospheres and magnetospheres – the relationships between planets and their surrounding space environments.

Goddard’s Deputy Director Cynthia Simmons will serve as Acting Center Director until a permanent replacement is found.