ITEM OF THE WEEK
NANCY GRACE ROMAN
A new space telescope is in the process of joining the venerable Hubble Space Telescope and magnificent James Webb Space Telescope. It’s named for the amazing scientist who sparkplugged the development of Space-borne astronomical research. The new telescope is not yet on-station and operational, but it will soon join HST and JWST, and important Earth-bound colleagues, such as the Simonyi Telescope at the Very Rubin Observatory, in uncovering new astronomical wonders.
Nancy Grace Roman: The Person
Dr. Nancy Grace Roman is considered the “Mother of Hubble” (Hubble Space Telescope) due to her hard work and tireless advocacy for Space-based astronomical research. She passed away on 12/26/2018, and her career is celebrated by the official naming of the recently launched wide-angle telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Nancy Grace Roman was born on May 16, 1925, in Nashville. Her father was a scientist and her mother taught music. Both were strong supporters of learning, and fostered an interest in the natural sciences in young Nancy. She was interested in astronomy in particular, and she organized a school astronomy club when she was only 11. She blew through the primary and secondary grade levels, graduating high school a year early. She went to Swarthmore College to study astronomy. Astronomy was dominated by men, and she found discouragement at every turn, except for a crumb of opportunity from the Astronomy Department chair, who taught her the basics and let her use the school’s student telescopes. By her sophomore year, she was working in Swarthmore’s Sproul Observatory, processing astronomical photographic plates. The Astro chair appreciated her efforts, and gave her a solo lecture course on positional astronomy, which required her to become very familiar with the school’s astronomy library and how to use it. She graduated from Swarthmore in early 1946, and at the Astro Chair’s suggestion, she applied for graduate study in astronomy at the University of Chicago. Higher education was in somewhat of a state of rebuilding after WWII and, like a baseball team that is “rebuilding,” had a few star astronomy researchers and were looking to add more to the faculty.
Her coursework only whetted her appetite for more learning opportunities, so she asked three prominent astronomers in the department for additional projects she could work on. Otto Struve gave her theory-based project; George van Biesbroeck gave her a project involving data analysis, but the third, William W. Morgan, delighted her with an observation-based project. She earned a Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1949, with a dissertation on galactic motion.
Now Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, she spent a couple of months at Case Western’s observatory, then post-Doc’ed with Morgan at U. Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory. Her primary research area was stellar spectroscopy, but she was developing a greater interest in galactic structure and the use of radio telescopes in the effort. She also was an active supporter of the use of the latest data acquisition/processing equipment and techniques, sometimes to the point of annoying her senior management. She some important advances in the understanding of stellar ages and motions. Those, and a fortuitous observation of AG Draconis, an odd variable star, made her a rising star (sorry) in the field.
Up to this point, Dr. Roman had encountered a considerable amount of discouragement in the sciences due to her gender, but had so far persevered. She had worked her way up the ranks and was now on the faculty of Chicago’s Astronomy Department. For whatever reason, she did not feel she would earn tenure, in spite of her success to date, which would normally have ensured promotion.
Gerard Kuiper, one of the few planetary scientists of the time, knew of Dr. Roman’s interest in galactic structure and similar topics, which require the use of radio astronomy data. He also knew she might be looking for a change. After all, Yerkes/Chicago had no radio astronomy capability. He knew about a radio astronomer position available at the Naval Research Laboratory in DC, and suggested to Dr. Roman that she apply. She did, and got the job.
Dr. Roman found the research work enjoyable, but ultimately it would prove to be a poor fit for her. Radio telescopes were in their infancy at that time, and just about any radio astronomer then working also had to be their chief engineer for their antennae and equipment, something not in Dr. Roman’s wheelhouse. But she pursued several productive topics, nonetheless, including the study of the propagation of sound underwater and the use of radar in geodesy, including figuring out how to determine the mass of the Earth based on precise radar determination of the Earth-Moon distance .
In the course of three years at the NRL, Dr. Roman’s work earned her greater responsibility, heading the microwave spectroscopy unit. Her earlier work with stellar spectroscopy and made her well-known in the astronomical community, and she has opportunities to consult for NRL on a wide variety of topics, including astronomy consulting with Project Vanguard, and for conference travel, which burnished her professional reputation considerably. For example, she was invited to attend the dedication of the new Byurakan Observatory in Soviet Armenia in 1956, the first American scientist to visit that country during the Cold War.
There was one element of foreshadowing that appeared at that time. She wrote a Letter to The Astronomical Journal, printed in October, 1959, entitled, “Planets of Other Suns,” where she states that planets the size of those in our Solar System, orbiting Alpha Centauri at the distances our planets do, could be directly imaged by telescopes then available, “…if our terrestrial atmosphere did not limit our resolution.” This is a dozen years after Lyman Spitzer started clamoring for Space-based telescopes, and with this Letter, Dr. Roman is clearly echoing the sentiment.
Life is all about timing, and location. Dr. Roman had come to DC to be a radio astronomer, and she’s realized that she is on the wrong career path for her. She’s been quite successful, but then….
Newly-created NASA came to call. Dr. Roman was a well-known astronomer (both nationally and internationally), had demonstrated she could run research projects, and was “local.” They asked her for advice on creating a program for Space-based astronomy, and Dr. Roman stepped up and applied for the job herself. She later related how it was a career-watershed decision she never regretted. She knew that the Head of Observational Astronomy position would be entirely administrative; taking it would end her research career. But she realized that she could best serve the cause of Science by taking the position, and “running interference” for talented teams rather than be the kind of administrator that “causes interference” for demoralized teams. And she was right.
Dr. Roman inherited a program portfolio that included the topics of geodesy and relativity studies, along with the Orbiting Solar Observatory program under development. She was very skilled at organization and network building, and was promoted in 1960 to the position of Chief of Astronomy at NASA, the first actual astronomer to have that position, and the first time NASA had a woman in a senior management position.
She was a dynamo. She developed and executed the eight-mission OSO program, which were launched over the period from March, 1962 to June, 1975. At the same time, she was supervising the development of the OAO program, and served as the Program Manager for OAO-1 and OAO-2.
Over the next few years, Dr. Roman oversaw the development and launch of the Uhuru X-ray satellite (1970), the Small Astronomy Satellite 2 gamma-ray telescope, the Small Astronomy Satellite 3 X-ray telescope, and a variety of smaller projects. In her spare time, she set up NASA’s scientific balloon program and NASA’s airborne astronomy program, including its first telescope-in-a-Lear-Jet and the follow-up Kuiper Airborne Observatory (the discovery of the rings of Uranus were made on the KAO). During her tenure, the COBE program was started (two of its scientists would win the Nobel Prize), as was the Infra-Red Astronomy Satellite, the International Ultraviolet Explorer, and finally, the Hubble Space Telescope.
Dr. Roman, flush with the success of OAO-2, had upped her level of promotion of the idea of orbiting a large Space-based telescope. NASA liked the idea, it got an endorsement from the National Academy of Science, in 1971. Dr. Roman set up an advisory committee, the Science Steering Group for the Large Space Telescope, and appointed the appropriate engineers and scientists to it. Roman was deeply involved in the planning for the LST and setting up its program structure, work that would lead to the creation of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). She pushed hard to secure the necessary funding, and paid particular attention to the LST having the best imaging system possible. As the result, the HST (nee LST) would end up being the first (non-military) observatory anywhere using CCD-base imaging, a major advance.
Dr. Roman would retire from NASA in 1979, but continued on as a consultant to finish setting up the STScI. She also served as the head of the Astronomical Data Center at NASA-Goddard (find more on the ADC’s history here). Not exactly a leisurely retirement! If that weren’t enough, she then taught advanced high school students and K-12 science teachers in underserved districts. She had always been an advocate for women in science, individually, and with the American Association of University Women.
The awards and recognition given Dr. Roman over the course of her illustrious career are too long to list here, but I’ll include two as examples of the breadth to which her influence on society reached. She was selected in 2017 to be one of the “Women of NASA” portrayed in a LEGO set (along with Margaret Hamilton of Hidden Figures fame, astronaut Mae Jemison, and astronaut Sally Ride). NASA re-named the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope in her honor; it is now officially the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
NASA recently successfully launched a Space telescope that will be a significant improvement over the aging Hubble Space Telescope. Since Nancy Grace Roman is rightfully regarded as the “Mother of Hubble,” it is appropriate to name this new addition to the U.S. Space-based astronomy assets after her!
Our two main Space telescopes will complement each other. JWST is seeing objects over 10 billion light-years away, providing astronomers clues of the earliest time in the Universe. The trade-off is that JWST can only see a tiny part of the sky at any one time. The NGRST has a much wider field-of-view. It isn’t as good as JWST at seeing objects from times near the Big Bang, but it will provide a lot of new insights into a wide variety of objects presently out of reach.
Both the JWST and NGRST will operate in the near-infrared and visible parts of the spectrum, and both will operate at the L2 point in Space, where the Sun and Earth’s gravity balance; L2 offers a simpler aiming capability as opposed to the HST, which is in Earth orbit. The optics of the NGRST are similar to those of the HST, however, the imaging and other electronics aboard are state-of-the-art. The main telescopes of the two are similar in size (2.4 meters for the main mirror), but the camera aboard the NGRST has over 300 megapixels, and can produce 1.5 terabytes of data per day!
The flood of data that will come from the NGRST will be difficult to process, since there will be so much of it. Even with the help of AI, making sense of such large datasets will provide an opportunity for citizen scientists to assist professional astronomers in a meaningful way!
Our two main Space telescopes are two parts of a trio of amazing astronomical tools; the Simonyi Telescope at the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile rounds out the group. Simonyi’s main mission is to see broadly and often, not to “go deep,” with the prospect of discovering large numbers of Kuiper Belt objects, exoplanets, and other interesting things that either move quickly or change brightness quickly. Citizen scientists are already deeply involved in the reduction of the huge volume of observational data being produced by Simonyi.
The “Big Three” astronomical tools mentioned above will no doubt produce many new discoveries, but let’s not count the many other Space- and ground-based assets in active and productive use today, and those now under development. What an exciting time to be alive and interested in astronomy!
For more information, see:
https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/docs/roman-science-sheet.pdf
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/introducing-the-roman-space-telescope
https://www.planetary.org/articles/meet-the-nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260831035213.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telescope
For citizen science opportunities in astronomy, see the Citizen Science section below. It’s a little early for citizen science with the NGRST, but there are a lot of other projects that need you now!