Helene Winters Named Parker Solar Probe Project Manager

The Parker Solar Probe mission has named Helene Winters of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory as project manager, effective January 6, 2020. Winters assumes this role from Patrick Hill of APL, who has moved into a new leadership position in the Laboratory’s Civil Space Mission Area.

Winters has many years of experience managing space missions and instruments, including serving as project manager for NASA’s MESSENGER mission and her current role as project manager for New Horizons, which is currently in an extended mission. She also served as project manager for the Mini-RF lunar radar instruments.

“After several planetary missions, this is my first opportunity to manage a heliophysics mission,” said Winters, “and it’s extremely exciting to become part of this team investigating our Sun. Parker Solar Probe has already revealed groundbreaking scientific discoveries and achieved multiple spacecraft ‘firsts’ in just over a year of operations, and we’re taking the next steps as we drive deeper and deeper into the Sun!”

Winters earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from James Madison University and a master’s in systems engineering from Johns Hopkins University. She joined APL in 1997.