HAMPTON, VA – 1977: Mathematician Mary Jackson, NASA’s first black female engineer stands for her … [+]
Getty Images
2020 was a unique year for recognizing women’s achievements in science and engineering. Here are some of the long-term goals of women who have made science history.
Theater Vera C. Rubin
The National Science Foundation began the year by naming a large earth-based observatory after astronaut Vera Rubin. The telescope, under construction, was previously known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).
At an event in January announcing the name, physicist Kathy Turner, program manager at the Department of Energy’s High Energy Physics Department, told reporters that reading as an undergraduate reading about Rubin’s work told her, “yes, science is area used by women we have a right to be in and a right to pursue, and we do not have to respond. “
Rubin first discovered evidence of a dark case in the 1970s, when she noticed that the galaxies she was seeing seemed to turn as if they had a lot more mass than astronomers could see. Decades later, one of the main aims of the Rubin Observatory’s research is to collect more data to help physicists discover how a dark matter responds to the structure of the universe. That work, and other ideas at the new facility in Chile, should begin in November 2021.
Nancy Grace’s Roman Space Telescope
NASA announced in May that the Hubble Space Telescope agent will be named for the group’s first major astronaut, who played an instrumental role in the Hubble production: Nancy Grace Roman.
“It was because of the leadership and vision of Nancy Grace Roman that NASA became a pioneer in astronomy and launched Hubble, the most powerful and fertile space telescope in the world,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. news.
Prior to its announcement, the Roman Space Telescope had been officially referred to as the Wide Field Infrared Exploration Telescope, or WFIRST. NASA plans to launch it by 2025.
NASA’s Mary W. Jackson headquarters
In June, NASA named its headquarters building in Washington, DC in honor of mathematician and engineer Mary Jackson, who helped NASA’s 27 years of work with the agency design a better aircraft, safer and faster and paves the way for crew space lighting.
“NASA’s nationwide facilities are named after people who gave their lives to push the boundaries of the aerospace industry,” Bridenstine said in a press release. “Mary W. Jackson was part of a very important group of women who helped NASA get American astronauts into space. ”
Jackson joined NASA in 1951, when the organization was still known as NACA and the workplace was tightly divided by race and gender. Despite these obstacles, Jackson became the group’s first black female engineer, wrote several research reports, and conducted experiments in NASA’s supersonic wind tunnel.