The New York Times names space editor

Victoria Jaggard

Soon after Artemis II splashed down in April, culminating a jaw-dropping run of New York Times coverage of the mission, the man who coordinated that effort, Michael Roston, made his long-planned move to the Express desk. The Science desk already was planning to fill multiple seats with editors, but it became clear that one of those hires would also have to step into some enormous moon boots. 

In short: We needed a space editor.

Four months later, I am thrilled to announce that we’ve landed one — and she’s one of the brilliant minds in the science journalism world, with confident skills and big ideas that stretch far beyond space. Victoria Jaggard, the executive editor of Science News and a former deputy on The Washington Post’s science desk, will be joining us as our new space editor. 

After graduating from Lehigh University, Victoria started her journalism career at Chemical & Engineering News — inventing a feature called Reel Science that reviewed movies based on their scientific merits, which was profiled in The Times — before moving to National Geographic. At National Geographic, she covered the Phoenix Mars lander’s arrival on the Red Planet, the last space shuttle launch and a nail-biting effect of wearing astronaut gloves. Later, after stints as the physical sciences editor at New Scientist and web science editor at Smithsonian magazine, she rejoined National Geographic and eventually worked her way up to the role of executive editor, science. During that time, she spearheaded a year of coverage around the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

From there, she became a deputy editor on the health and science desk at The Washington Post, where she ran a team of reporters covering all aspects of science, from the physics of grinding espresso to the staffing crisis plaguing the nation’s top rocket engineering lab. Her work for The Post put particular emphasis on multimedia storytelling. Jaggard drove development of an interactive feature about the global alarm bells raised by the epic 2022 eruption in Tonga and cross-department live blog coverage of the 2024 total solar eclipse.

Among her writers at The Post was another of our new hires, Carolyn Johnson, who had this to say about Victoria: “Victoria brings a deep well of science knowledge, strong instincts for great stories and a deft touch as an editor. The real secret about her is that while she’s proudly geeky, she is also preternaturally cool  — a quirky, stylish colleague who can go deep on the nerdiest topics but also spot and elevate ideas, concepts and news to make the world of science interesting and relevant to pretty much anyone.”

Most recently, Victoria served as executive editor of Science News magazine, where she helped shape the strategic vision for the 105-year-old publication, including a major push into new platforms: She redesigned and wrote the magazine’s weekly newsletter, and she helped run its vertical video efforts.

Victoria’s first day will be Monday, Sept. 14. Please join me in welcoming her to The Times, and to the Science desk. 

Bill Wasik is The New York Times' science editor.