One of my favorite memories
as a kid was just these beautiful, very, very dark nights.
It's amazing to be able
to see the Milky Way, but also be able to see faint aurora
as they dance across the sky and things like that.
I remember as a teenager sitting with friends and looking up
at the dark sky and asking yourself the question of what's out there.
It's just such a big, wide open space for exploration.
Hi, my name is Joe Westlake and I'm the director for the Heliophysics
Division at NASA.
I think the biggest thing to be excited
about in my new role is working with the wonderful Heliophysics team.
That vibrant community really enables so many amazing things
and I'm really excited to be able to engage with
all these people that are just so energetic about the
science that we're doing.
Heliophysics as a discipline is blossoming.
We're in a position now where there are so many missions,
so many instruments, so many technologies that are coming out of Heliophysics
right now and NASA in general, that our impact
on society, on everyday life is known and it's big.
So we're at a point now where we
as heliophysics just need to start asking really big questions.
What does our future look like?
I want that vision to be our shared vision as heliophysicists.
And if you think of our scientific understanding
as being raised up by each of these individuals knowledge
and each piece of that diverse community comes together
to build the sort of beautiful picture that we need to develop for the world.
It's a huge impact that that team has.
Every person alone has a piece of that,
and no one person alone can make the entire picture.
Let me try and bridge these different places and figure out ways
to enable our teams, to enable our heliophysicists to do great work.
Let's do awesome stuff.