March 4, 2024
Kristy McQuinn, Assistant Professor in the astronomy group, has been in the news lately for her appointment as the new Mission Head for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This is NASA's next great space telescope after the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. Kristy remains a professor at Rutgers (currently taking a leave of absence for the year) and will be at Rutgers through the spring semester.
Today she was interviewed on "Good Day Philadelphia" https://www.fox29.com/video/1420461
and there's a Rutgers Today story too:https://www.rutgers.edu/news/rutgers-astronomer-named-mission-head-science-operations-center-nasas-next-space-telescope?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rutgerstoday&utm_content=Achievements
Congratulations, Kristy!
The new telescope is named after Nancy Grace Roman (1925-2018), who was a prominent 20th century astronomer. She obtained her astronomy PhD in 1949 from the University of Chicago. She did highly recognized work on stellar spectroscopy at Yerkes Observatory and radio astronomy while at the Naval Research Lab. In 1959 she moved to NASA as the head of observational astronomy, where she essentially built support for NASA's space program among the astronomy community. One of her major legacies is the Hubble Space Telescope, the last NASA project she was closely involved in. It is a fitting tribute that NASA in 2020 decided to name the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope after Nancy Grace Roman.
