During Nancy Roman's tenure as the agency's Chief of Astronomy, NASA launched Stargazer—the first successful space telescope—as part of the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory program.

Over a decade before the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, Nancy Roman oversaw the Orbiting Solar Observatory program, which launched eight spinning spacecraft into low Earth orbit to study the sun.

Nicknamed the "mother of Hubble," Nancy Roman gave lectures on the potential of space science, coordinated between astronomers and engineers, and secured government funding for the space telescope.

Nancy Roman, NASA's first Chief of Astronomy and the architect of the Hubble Space Telescope, was discouraged from pursuing science throughout her academic career.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope—the first major NASA space telescope named after a woman—is expected to survey 12% of the sky in 17 months, a feat that would take the Hubble Space Telescope 1,700 years.

Nancy Roman credits observing a rare and unexpected change in the light from a pair of stars with making her well known in the astronomical community before her role at NASA.

View a simulated demonstration of how the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will survey large portions of the sky to capture in 90 minutes what took three years for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Space telescope development was driven by a desire to bypass Earth's atmosphere

The most important figure in the effort to create what would become the Hubble Space Telescope was Lyman Spitzer, who first proposed a telescope in orbit in 1946. The nearly 50-year endeavor led to space-based observatories, which are not limited by Earth's atmosphere absorbing or distorting most wavelengths of light.

The next generation of space-based observatories

How exactly does a space telescope come to be funded by NASA? NASA's most famous telescopes, like Hubble and James Webb, were once featured in the decadal survey–a once per decade survey run by the National Academy of Science that recommends which projects to support. This article and podcast covers which telescope designs are in contention to be part of NASA's next generation of space-based observatories.

Nancy Roman's research included a paper that provided insights into the formation of the Milky Way galaxy, which the Astrophysical Journal selected as one of the 100 most important papers during its first century of publication.

NASA was founded in response to early Soviet space achievements

Although starting behind in the Space Race in 1958, NASA became a global leader in humanity's exploration of space with the Apollo program, which placed astronauts on the moon. Since then, it has been responsible for the construction of multiple telescopes, the International Space Station, and development of the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon before eventually reaching Mars.

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is a NASA spacecraft with telescopes designed to study gamma ray bursts—the most powerful explosions in the universe, which result from supernova explosions during the formation of neutron stars and black holes.

The Hubble Space Telescope made discoveries within our solar system and across the universe

The observatory helped confirm the presence of water on Jupiter's moon Europa, and uncovered seasonal variations on planets like Uranus. It also observed exoplanets and gravitational lensing, proved the existence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies, and detected the accelerated expansion of the universe.

View galleries of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

With more than 1.7 million observations made since 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of space missions, planets, stellar nurseries, interstellar comets, star clusters, galaxies, and more. This search tool allows users to sort and filter across these celestial objects to explore over 35 years of Hubble's astrophotography.

After retiring in 1979, Nancy Roman worked at the Goddard Space Flight Center—eventually becoming its director—before retiring again to teach middle school students and record audio textbooks for students with disabilities.

View 60 years of NASA space exploration

Established in 1958—a year after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1—the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has taken humanity into outer space and helped reveal the nature of the universe. Historic moments include the Apollo 11 mission putting humanity on the Moon and construction of the International Space Station.

Hubble overcame early optical failure and became a critical scientific instrument

The flaw in Hubble's mirror was smaller than the width of a human hair, but fixing it required a space mission as complex as a Hollywood rescue story—with astronauts installing corrective optics like contact lenses for a giant eye in the sky.

The Challenger disaster delayed the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope

The 1986 explosion of the space shuttle shortly after liftoff killed seven crew members and grounded NASA's space fleet. Scientists used the downtime to refine ground control software and upgrade telescope instrument sensitivity, but maintaining the telescope's clean room storage cost NASA approximately $6M per month.

Designs for the Hubble Space Telescope were based on Cold War spy satellites

By incorporating elements of the KH-11 KENNEN reconnaissance satellites, NASA could incorporate existing classified manufacturing expertise and infrastructure from the intelligence community to expedite the research project.

The Polaris Dawn program led to the first commercial spacewalk

As part of the Polaris program, this first mission included a crew comprising astronauts and SpaceX engineers, who conducted scientific experiments and cultural outreach, such as raising funds for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

The twenty-year effort to design the Webb's optics

Since its located 1 million miles from Earth, the Webb space observatory has to be able to repair itself—no Space Shuttles can be dispatched with astronaut engineers to repair it. That's why over two decades teams reiterated, cross-checked, and hyper-optimized the Webb's observing surface. Their efforts produced the world's largest space-based optical surface that is peering billions of years back in time. Learn the wild engineering of the telescope here.

Atmospheric drag is causing the Hubble Space Telescope to drift toward Earth slowly

Without interventions to boost the observatory to a higher orbit, Hubble is expected to fall to Earth's surface in the mid-2030s. In the meantime, the telescope is expected to continue to be productive by shifting its mode of operation to rely on a single gyroscope, down from three.

NASA's Stardust mission collected and returned samples from a comet

Launched in 1999, the spacecraft traveled to comet Wild 2 and captured more than 10,000 dust particles from its coma using a tennis racket-like mesh covered in aerogel. It also took pictures of the comet before returning to Earth and releasing the collection canister during its 2006 flyby.

View a gallery of neutron stars and related phenomena captured by Chandra

Launched on July 23, 1999, the Chandra X-ray Observatory is one of NASA's "Great Observatories" and has captured high-energy astronomical phenomena, including neutron stars and their surrounding nebulae, which are composed of the outer stellar layers expelled by their predecessors. Data from other observatories, including Hubble, help produce spectacular composite images.

James Webb Space Telescope aims to unlock secrets of the early universe

Decades in the making, JWST is designed to study the universe in infrared light, allowing it to see through cosmic dust and observe ancient galaxies, star formation, and potentially life-supporting exoplanets. The Webb will orbit the sun at a stable point 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

The European Space Agency is building a space-based gravitational wave observatory

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna will consist of three spacecraft forming an equilateral triangle that will trail Earth as it orbits the sun. Lasers will travel 2.5 million kilometers along the sides of the triangle between these spacecraft to detect massive objects undergoing mergers or inspiraling, as well as speculative phenomena (e.g., cosmic strings).

Hubble's first light test produced an underwhelming photograph

This test represents the first time light travels entirely through an observatory's optical system and reaches its detectors, producing an image. Although the telescope's warped mirror was not discovered and announced until a month after first light, the issue was not responsible for the simplicity of the first light image.

The accidental birth of radio astronomy and the benefits of a moon-based telescope

Detecting radio waves from distant celestial objects is complicated by noise from solar wind, which the nighttime side of the moon is shielded from. If lunar temperature extremes can be overcome, the environment may serve as an optimal future home for radio astronomy, a field that began in 1928 when a 30-meter-long directional antenna, mostly out of brass and wood, picked up signals from the Sagittarius constellation.

Major milestones of the Space Shuttle program's 135 missions included the launches of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the first American woman and African-American astronauts in space.

Asteroids are often unobserved until they are days away from Earth

Even those large enough to cause local or regional damage are too small, dim, and far away to be observed readily from cosmological distances. New tools, like NASA's NEO Surveyor telescope, aim to address gaps in detection systems.

Four astronomical discoveries from ancient Greece

Modern astronomy relies on making discoveries without being present on the planets, stars, galaxies, and other objects studied. Imagine the difficulty the ancient Greeks had studying them without computers and telescopes. Yet somehow they calculated precise measurements of planetary distances, sizes, and more. Read this page to learn more about early triumphs in astronomical science.

As the first female faculty member in the University of Chicago's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nancy Roman earned less than two-thirds of what her male counterparts earned.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor can detect asteroids coming from the sun

Telescopes directed at the sun or lacking heat shields may become damaged, limiting our ability to monitor potentially dangerous objects coming from that direction. The NEO Surveyor is built to overcome this problem and spot asteroids that reflect as little as 5% of incoming light.

The Hubble Space Telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble

Using the Hooker Telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California in the 1920s, Hubble identified Cepheid variable stars in what was believed to be the Andromeda nebula. These stars can be used to determine distance in space, allowing Hubble to realize that Andromeda was a galaxy of its own.

Gaia mapped two billion stars in the Milky Way

Using geometric parallax, the European Space Agency mission made position measurements accurate to 2.78 × 10⁻¹⁰ degrees, revealing large-scale galactic structure and dynamics. Remnants of ancient galactic mergers were also identified within the Milky Way.

View historical records of solar observations and discoveries, from telescopes in the early 1600s revealing sunspots to NASA's Parker Solar Probe photographing the sun from within its outer corona in 2025.

Lagrange points offer energy-efficient orbits for telescopes

Lagrange Points are special locations where gravitational forces let spacecraft "park" without constant course corrections, making them ideal for science missions. NASA’s James Webb Telescope uses Lagrange Point 2 to stay aligned with Earth while orbiting the Sun.