Author: Chelsea Gohd

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —President Trump interrupted a NASA press conference today (Aug. 30) to congratulate the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team on a successful launch. Just a few years ago, however, the president tried to cancel this very mission.

In today's briefing, mission leadership was going through the specifics of Roman's successful launch and the science the observatory is expected to deliver when NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman got a phone call. It was the president. The room fell silent, though I could hear Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, say, "He's not kidding."

"Hello, sir," Isaacman said. He got up to take the call outside the room but came came back in a few moments later. "The president of the United States would like to address and congratulate everyone on this mission," he said. "You're live, Mr. President."

"I just want to thank everybody and congratulate you," Trump said on the phone, which Isaacman held up to the microphone and clearly displayed Trump's name. "Boy, it looked beautiful on television ... You are doing a fantastic job, and I'm supplying you all that money."

The president spoke for more than a minute while Isaacman smiled, holding the phone up to a microphone for everyone to hear, and the crowd of journalists listened intently. The call was mostly congratulatory, but Trump did go on a brief tangent, claiming that he has taken NASA to new heights.

Near the beginning of his first term in 2016, Trump said, he visited NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida and saw that "grass was growing through the cracks in the runways, and there were a lot of cracks. And I looked; that place was closed ... It was just literally closed. And now, again, like we are with the country itself, we're the hottest there is. We're the hottest. You're the hottest in space, and we have the hottest country anywhere in the world."

(To clarify, KSC was only closed for two days in 2016, and that was because of Hurricane Matthew.)

President Trump's relationship with the Roman mission is more complicated than today's congratulatory call might suggest, however. Under the Trump administration, the White House has repeatedly tried to cancel or restrict funding for this mission.

Between 2019 and 2021, for example, the president proposed canceling Roman (then called WFIRST) three separate times in three different budget requests. Congress rejected those proposals and kept the mission funded. But then, in April 2025, reports emerged about initial "passback" budget documents that proposed slashing NASA science funding by about 50%. The proposed cuts were deep enough, experts suggested, that the Roman mission would end if they were passed. That didn't happen either, of course; Congress ended up passing a $24.4 billion NASA budget for fiscal year 2026, keeping the agency's funding relatively flat.

As Trump made his call today to a room packed with science journalists, this bit of recent budget history did not go unnoticed.

A direct question

"Question for the administrator," SpaceNews reporter Jeff Foust asked Isaacman today following Trump's call. "It's great to hear the president call in and show us excitement about the Roman launch. I know the administration in past years, in its first term, proposed zeroing out Roman and also proposed a serious cut in Roman's budget just last year. What did you tell the administration, and the president, to change his mind and make him so excited about a mission that he once proposed to cancel?"

Isaacman did not directly address the question, focusing instead on the current climate, which he said is very positive.

"I'm incredibly grateful for his support, the space policy, the resources," Isaacman responded. "Sounds like from that call, maybe even more resources, which is also a great thing for more missions of science and discovery."

Nearly a decade ago, I found myself laughing alongside one of the most iconic women in astronomy. This week, a telescope bearing her name launches to the stars. So let's travel back in time and meet Nancy Grace Roman together.

Standing under a tent in Washington D.C. at the 2017 inaugural "March for Science," a hodgepodge of scientists and reporters crowd together as the rain pours down outside. "That's Nancy Roman," I hear Bill Nye whisper to me as we stood on the outskirts of the tent. And as I struggled to keep my cool next to one of my childhood heroes, here he is pointing out another.

Looking across the room, I see her. There, in the corner of the tent, a woman with white hair wearing a "science not silence" pin sits by herself, soaking in the scenery. I hadn't noticed her before as, with the noise and crowd, it was tough to notice much of anything. But Bill was right. There she was, the "mother of Hubble." The woman who pioneered astronomy at NASA and pushed space science into the future.

A quick catch-up

If you're not too familiar with Nancy, let's speed run a little bit of information about the woman whose name was chosen to represent NASA's latest space telescope.

Nancy Grace Roman, born in 1925, was a pioneering astronomer and the first chief of astronomy at NASA. In creating and leading NASA's astronomy program, she was also the first woman in an executive position at the agency.

She earned the nickname "mother of Hubble," because of the critical role that she played in realizing the Hubble Space Telescope. She spent all 93 of her years exploring the universe.

Meeting Nancy Grace Roman

Now, in this moment I'm already overwhelmed meeting Bill Nye for the first time. Unsurprisingly, I was a science-obsessed 90s kid who would wait my turn at the computer just to explore the lab in the Bill Nye CD-ROM game. But now, all of a sudden I'm also made aware that this woman who paved the way for modern astronomy is just sitting right there, mere feet away from me across the tent. And I knew I had to say hello.

So, walking over, I introduced myself.

"Hi, it's so nice to meet you," I offer, reaching out my hand to shake hers, unsure of what else to say. "I'm a bit starstruck."

And without missing a beat, she responds: "You know, I have a thing for stars," delivering the quip with a small laugh and a bright sparkle in her eye.

She holds my hand for a moment and we smile and giggle together. It's so brief, maybe just a few seconds, but for that moment I shared a cheeky inside joke with one of history's most important astronomers.

But just as the moment passes, I once again see Bill Nye, this time accompanied by NASA astronaut Leland Melvin, walking up to greet Nancy.

The pair are both incredibly accomplished icons in their own right. But in approaching Nancy, it was clear that I wasn't the only one starstruck. One by one, Bill and Leland leaned down and shared their own personal moments with Nancy, holding her hands just as I did and speaking with her in hushed tones as their eyes lit up with the same delight that I felt in mine.

Time seemed to stand still as the two spoke to Nancy; two legends in space and science meeting their own science hero. And just standing nearby, I felt the love and admiration for Nancy, whose impact on astronomy will be felt for many years still to come.

This entire meeting took place over the course of mere minutes. But still, 9 years later it sticks in my memory. About one year after this event, Nancy passed away at the age of 93. And today, her legacy lives on in Hubble, in the trail she blazed forward in astronomy and for women in science and now in the space telescope bearing her name.

Nancy always had a thing for stars, and even though she's gone, I like to think that with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, she'll finally get to be among them.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is about to launch on an incredible adventure to help scientists explore the great mysteries of the universe. But who was Nancy Grace Roman?

You might have heard about the upcoming launch on Sunday morning (Aug. 30), which will send NASA's next flagship space telescope up to investigate everything from dark matter and dark energy to far-off worlds beyond our solar system. But do you know who the telescope is named for? This observatory will be an absolute powerhouse for astronomy, and its namesake is perfectly fitting.

Nancy Grace Roman was the first-ever chief astronomer at NASA and the agency's first female executive. She created NASA's space astronomy program in 1959, just one year after the agency was created. She laid the groundwork for modern astronomy and played a critical role in making missions like the Hubble Space Telescope happen, a feat that earned her the nickname the "mother of Hubble." In short, Nancy Grace Roman was a trailblazing scientist and leader whose work has made modern space science possible. But let's dig a little deeper.

Roman's early years

Roman was born on May 16, 1925. Her mother was a music teacher and her father was a geophysicist. Over the years, Roman would often attribute her early interest in science to influence from her parents.

"I teasingly have blamed my mother for getting me interested in astronomy, because I can remember up in Michigan she used to take me out at night and show me the constellations and the aurora and things like that. But she also showed me birds and trees and animals and plants and that sort of thing, so it wasn't just astronomy," Roman said in a 1980 interview with David DeVorkin. That conversation took place just a few years after Hubble formally began development and a decade before the space telescope would launch (though at this time, Hubble was still called the "Large Space Telescope").

Roman's passion for astronomy grew, and, at age 11, she started an astronomy club with classmates. In addition to getting her friends involved in her astronomical interests, she spent her time checking out books from her local library in a quest to learn as much as she could. As she put it, she "read everything I could get my hands on." And by junior high, Roman had already decided to become an astronomer.

"I can remember thinking, probably in junior high school or early high school days, that I wanted to go into astronomy," she said, adding that her parents were supportive of her early decision to study the stars.

At that time, not all colleges even allowed women to apply, so Roman had to look for a school that both accepted women and had a solid astronomy program. She eventually ended up choosing Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, which she attended through the end of World War II. Roman would go on to graduate school at the University of Chicago, where she studied astronomy and worked at the Yerkes Observatory, where she was the first woman on the academic staff.

Trailblazing at NASA

After spending her early-career years at academic institutions, Roman moved on to conduct astronomy research at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). She was building her career observing stars and galactic structure, bouncing radar off the moon, studying orbital mechanics and so much more.

Then, in 1959, a new opportunity arose. With her expertise and experience across astronomy, and with NASA just getting up and running, Roman was asked to join the new agency and create its first astronomy program. In stepping into this role, Roman became NASA's first-ever chief astronomer, as well as the agency's first female executive.

"The idea of coming in with an absolutely clean slate to set up a program that I thought was likely to influence astronomy for 50 years was just a challenge that I couldn't turn down," Roman told DeVorkin. She added that, when she started NASA's astronomy program, she spent a great deal of time visiting astronomy departments across the country, not just to communicate what NASA was doing but also to understand what astronomers wanted to accomplish with the agency. And it was at the 1959 American Astronomical Society meeting that Roman announced NASA's brand-new astronomy program.

While Roman had been heavily involved in research prior to joining NASA, her role expanded considerably when she began heading the agency's astronomy program. In addition to continuing her astronomy research outside of NASA, she was now leading NASA's early space missions. From finding astronomers to join NASA to working alongside engineers to proposing mission budgets and navigating the many convoluted channels of a government agency to make these missions happen, Roman worked across many areas of the field to lead astronomy at the agency.

A decade after she joined NASA, Apollo 11 landed the first humans on the moon. So, as Roman pushed for progress in science, crewed spaceflight missions were taking center stage. But Roman and her colleagues fought to continue astronomy at the agency alongside crewed spaceflight. This role required her not only to be an exceptional astronomer but also to understand the political landscape both within and surrounding NASA.

Roman realized "the importance of the politics in the scientific community," she said. "We do have to deal with it, even though we would like to make all of our decisions in a vacuum strictly on scientific and technical grounds."

'Mother of Hubble'

Roman had a hand in many missions, projects and research fields, and some of the work she did helped change humanity's understanding of the cosmos. The most notable example may be the Hubble Space Telescope.

The idea for a "Large Space Telescope" (an early name for Hubble) had been around since the 1940s. But there was heavy skepticism about how feasible it would be — and also how much it would cost. Leading astronomy at NASA, Roman really had to sell the importance of this telescope to Congress to receive the funding necessary to make it happen. She pitched the project, coordinating efforts across NASA to make sure that the message landed on Capitol Hill.

"It was Nancy in the old days, before the internet and before Google and email and all that stuff, who really helped to sell the Hubble Space Telescope, organize the astronomers, who eventually convinced Congress to fund it," Edward J. Weiler, Roman’s successor as chief scientist for Hubble, told the Voice of America in 2011.

Hubble opened our eyes to the cosmos, completely changing astronomy as we know it. The space telescope hasn't just collected incredible data; its images have also given the general public a new appreciation for the beauty and wonder of space. And so, in making Hubble happen, Roman didn't just advance scientific progress in astronomy; she also built an enduring bridge between the public and astronomy that continues to this day.

Roman won't get to see her namesake telescope launch into the heavens; she died on Dec. 25, 2018 at the age of 93. But its work will continue the legacy of NASA space science that she worked so hard establish and develop.