Successful launch of the NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
🚀 🔭 👍
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wq3VHsL_bE
Note that it will take a few weeks to reach the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, 1.5 million km away.
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Some fascinating images of the various parts and subsystems of the instruments aboard the NASA Roman Space Telescope.
Nancy Grace Roman (May 16, 1925 – December 25, 2018) - American astronomer, first female executive at NASA, one of the “visionary founders of the US civilian space program”, aka as the “Mother of Hubble”, active public speaker and educator, and an advocate for women in the sciences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hubble_esa/44477663304/
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From https://mag.uchicago.edu/science-medicine/wider-scope -
“I have no soft spot for the University of Chicago,” says Nancy Grace Roman, PhD’49.
Roman estimates she was making no more than 60% of what her male colleagues earned.
When she brought her concerns to the dept chair, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, the Indian-born astrophysicist who went on to win a Nobel Prize, he told her, “We don’t discriminate against women. We can just get them for less.”
“I would have thought he’d understand discrimination,” says Roman.
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"To women already in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) who are still experiencing sexism, Roman says: “Persevere. Things are better than they used to be. Women now can and do get professorships; women are heads of observatories and departments.”
But the number of women in senior academic positions is not commensurate with the number of women in the field, she says, and advises they prepare for inevitable problems."
A short documentary on Nancy Grace Roman and her journey from the stifling male-dominated halls of the U of Chicago to becoming a trailblazing astronomer and top leader at NASA.
Pic of Nancy Grace Roman with Women of Hubble.
Dr. Nancy Grace Roman at the Space Telescope Operations Control Center at NASA Goddard on March 31, 2017, with some women from the Hubble Space Telescope project. Left to right: Beverly Serrano, Morgan Van Arsdall, Nancy Grace Roman, Olivia Lupie, Padi Boyd, and Erin Kisliuk.
She was almost 92 years old at that time.
Credit: NASA/GSFC/Jim Jeletic
More pics at https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahubble/with/41294385755
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After 21 years at NASA, Roman took early retirement in 1979 partly to take care of her elderly mother.
She continued as consultant and contractor until 1997.
Roman then spent many years teaching advanced junior high and high school students and K-12 science teachers, esp. in underserved areas. Served the blind and dyslexic. And gave public talks in senior centers, universities and churches.
There is much we can learn from Roman's life and apply to ours.
Predicted performance of the Roman Space Telescope Coronagraph for observations of exoplanets.
The Roman Coronagraph is designed to detect planets 100 million to 1 billion times fainter than their stars, or 100 to 1,000 times better than existing space-based coronagraphs. The Roman Coronagraph will be capable of directly imaging reflected starlight from a planet akin to Jupiter in size, temperature, and distance from its parent star.
https://roman-docs.ipac.caltech.edu/roman-instruments/roman-coronagraph-instrument
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/the-roman-coronagraph-instrument/
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The Roman Space Telescope, 15 hours after launch, is ~154,000 km from Earth, ~40% of the distance to the Moon's orbit, traveling at 7,500 km/h.
Go RST!
https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-system/#/sc_roman_space_telescope?to=earth
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