NASA Names The Next Space Telescope After The Brilliant 'Mother of Hubble' - ScienceAlert

NASA just named a powerful new space telescope for the woman who masterminded the existence of such observatories in the first place.

Nancy Grace Roman spent 21 years at NASA developing and launching space-based observatories that studied the sun, deep space, and Earth's atmosphere.

She most famously worked to develop the concepts behind the Hubble Space Telescope, which just spent its 30th year in orbit.

Roman "had huge influence in all of astronomy and space," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science, said in a NASA video announcing the name. .

Zurbuchen said Roman's work led space astronomy to where it is today.

"For that reason: that vision, that foresight … that leadership on the inside of the agency," Zurbuchen said, "that really makes her, I think, the only name that is appropriate for this large space telescope that we're building now.".

Over its five-year lifetime, the Roman Space Telescope will measure light from a billion galaxies and survey the inner Milky Way with the hope of finding about 2,600 new planets and photographing them.

I was told, from the beginning, that women could not be scientists," Roman told NASA.

"I did not want to start over as an engineer," Roman told NASA.

One of the first things she did at NASA was to organize top astronomers and engineers from across the country in 1960, then have them "sit down together and come up with something that the engineers thought would work, and that the astronomers thought would do their job," she said

Though Roman retired from NASA in 1969, she continued to consult for the space agency, and her early organization and advocacy planted the seeds that ultimately led to Hubble and the Great Observatories program

"It's hard to decide how history will decide to view my accomplishments," Roman told NASA

"Nancy Grace Roman deserves a place in the heavens she studied and opened for so many," Zurbuchen said