28 ASTRONOMY • APRIL 2021
Shaping NASA
astronomy
While Rubin looked at
galaxies, Roman focused on
the characteristics of stars
within the Milky Way. Her
seminal 1950 Astrophysical
Journal paper on stellar ages
and star formation redefined
the structure of our galaxy.
Because younger stars are born
of the expelled nuclear remnants
of older stars, they contain more
complex elements than their fore-
bears. Astronomers call anything
heavier than helium and hydrogen
(the two lightest elements, which
primarily fuel stars) a metal.
Thus, older stars have lower
metallicity, or metal content, than
younger stars. Analyzing and
characterizing starlight, Roman
found that older, redder stars have
slower, more elliptical, and more
highly inclined orbits around the
galactic center than younger,
bluer, faster-moving stars, whichfollow circular orbits and hug the
galactic plane as they form.
In 1956, this research elicited
an invitation to the opening of
the Byurakan Observatory in
Armenia in the Soviet Union.
With only three Americans
attending, this brought Roman
notice back home. And just a
year later, the Russians launched
Sputnik. The space race was onand, in 1959, Roman joined the
newly formed NASA Office of
Space Science.
“The chance to start with a
clean slate to map out a program
that I thought would inf luence
astronomy for fifty years was
more than I could resist,” Roman
wrote in an autobiography pub-
lished in Annual Review of
Astronomy and Astrophysics
shortly after her death.
As a NASA administrator,
Roman ended her research career
but led the way on several orbit-
ing space observatories in the
ensuing years. And under her
fierce leadership and lobbying,
the Hubble Space Telescope sur-
vived countless assaults and
setbacks, earning her nickname
as the mother of Hubble. But
in her time at NASA, Roman’s
endeavors set the stage for many
other projects as well, including
the Chandra X-ray Observatory
and the Spitzer Space Telescope.ABOVE: The Roman
Space Telescope’s
wide field of view will
allow it to image vast
swaths of the sky in
a single shot. This
simulated view of the
Andromeda Galaxy
(M31) shows how
much the camera will
cover in one image —
in this case, a region
spanning 34,000
light-years and
containing more
than 50 million stars.
GSFC/SVS
RIGHT: Roman,
posing here in 1966
with a model of the
observatory that
would become the
Hubble Space
Telescope, became
known as the mother
of Hubble for her
dedication in seeing
the project come to
fruition. During her
time at NASA, Roman
was the driving force
behind many other
space observatories,
including the Cosmic
Background Explorer
satellite. NASA