The number of American scientists and researchers connected to sensitive government programmes who have died or gone missing under unexplained circumstances has now risen to nine. The latest case to come to light involves Michael David Hicks, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who died on July 30, 2023 at the age of 59. Hicks worked at JPL from 1998 to 2022 and contributed to more than 80 scientific papers during his career. He was involved in multiple high profile missions including the DART asteroid deflection project, the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking programme, the Dawn Mission, and NASA’s Deep Space 1 Mission. His cause of death has never been publicly disclosed, and there appears to be no record of an autopsy being conducted. Three of the other scientists on the growing list also had direct ties to JPL. Frank Maiwald, a longtime colleague of Hicks, died in July 2024 at the age of 61 with no cause of death released and no autopsy performed. Astrophysicist Carl Grillmair, whose NASA backed work contributed to the discovery of water on a distant planet, was shot and killed on his front porch in February 2026 in what remains an unexplained attack. Monica Reza, a JPL aerospace engineer who co invented a futuristic rocket propulsion alloy called Mondaloy, vanished without a trace during a hike in California in June 2025. Others on the list include retired Air Force Major General William Neil McCasland, who disappeared from his Albuquerque home in February 2026 without his phone, MIT fusion energy researcher Nuno Loureiro, who was killed at his home in December 2025, two employees of Los Alamos National Laboratory who vanished separately in 2025, and Novartis chemical biologist Jason Thomas, whose body was found in a Massachusetts lake in March 2026 after disappearing three months earlier #reelheadline #pubity #viral