Science is interconnected; no important question stands alone.  The Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is an organization where discoveries in one scientific discipline have a direct route to other areas of study.  This flow is something extremely valuable and is rare in the scientific world.

“It’s important to remind ourselves that we have the most glorious jobs in the world. We are all paid to figure out how the universe began and how it evolves. We’re paid to try to figure out how the night sky, full of galaxies and stars and planets, came to be. And we’re paid to try to find life elsewhere in the universe. What could be better than that?”

- Paul Hertz, Director of Astrophysics Division