King Charles and Queen Camilla hosted the extended royal family for Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace. Guests included Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, Lady Marina and Amelia, Sarah Chatto… and the Earl of Snowdon even arrived by bike! 🎄Quite the gathering!
Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor takes part in the carriage driving event on day 4 of the Royal Windsor Horse Show 2026 at Windsor Castle in Windsor, England -May 17th 2026.
Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor takes part in the carriage driving event on day 4 of the Royal Windsor Horse Show 2026 at Windsor Castle in Windsor, England -May 17th 2026.
A photo of Dr. Nancy Grace Roman holding a model of the Hubble Space Telescope.
You have to be a pretty big deal for NASA to name a space telescope after you, and that is certainly the case for Dr. Nancy Grace Roman — our Roman Space Telescope’s namesake. She’s sometimes called the “mother of Hubble,” but she’s really the mother of all space-based observatories and NASA science in general. As NASA’s first chief astronomer, Dr. Roman's vision and leadership supercharged space science and helped make NASA the world-class scientific institution it is today.
Nancy Grace Roman as a young child.
Nancy Grace Roman was born on May 16, 1925 in Nashville, Tennessee. She was naturally curious about the world, a trait she attributed to taking nature walks with her mother as a child. By seventh grade, she had decided that she was going to be an astronomer.
She later recounted, “I certainly did not receive any encouragement. I was told from the beginning that women could not be scientists.”
A 1972 photo of Dr. Roman at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Nancy received her bachelor’s in astronomy from Swarthmore College in 1946 and her doctorate in astronomy from the University of Chicago in 1949. She specialized in spectral classification, which involves spreading starlight out into a rainbow to see the individual colors. She would decode these rainbows to learn about the temperature and brightness of the stars, and their distances and movements.
In 1959, just six months after NASA was founded, someone at the agency asked Dr. Roman if she knew someone who might be interested in creating a space-based astronomy program. She sure did — she applied for the job herself, and she got it!
Dr. Roman works with a model of the Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO).
Creating a whole space program from scratch was no small feat. Dr. Roman quickly set her sights on the stars, determined to make space-based telescopes a reality.
Scientists had been batting around the idea of Hubble for generations. Today, after more than three decades in orbit and thousands of discoveries, it’s hard to believe that Hubble was ever a contentious idea. But in the mid-20th century, a budget-starved NASA and a post-World War II government were hesitant to follow the ambitious ideal of a giant new telescope.
But Dr. Roman knew how transformative it would be to observe the cosmos from above Earth’s turbulent atmosphere, which blurs images from even the best ground-based telescopes. So she gathered astronomers from around the country and sat them down in a room with NASA engineers to hash out the possibilities.
Then she championed the idea to Congress, saying that “for the price of one night at the movies each year, each American would receive 15 years of exciting discoveries.” (And she actually undersold it, since we’ve now received over 36 years of discoveries from Hubble!)
In this 1965 photo, Dr. Roman (center) conducts a demonstration with Smith College students during a visit to NASA.
With leadership experience stretching back to at least the fifth or sixth grade, when she organized her friends into an astronomy club, Dr. Roman paired a personable approach with unwavering commitment to the mission, regardless of who or what stood in her way. And now we have her to thank for not just Hubble but for every other space telescope that has followed.
A portrait of Dr. Roman with the Stratoscope II balloon in the background.
In less than a month, the observatory named in Dr. Roman’s honor will journey to the heavens to transform our view of the universe. Read more about the woman behind the mission’s name here: https://science.nasa.gov/people/nancy-roman/. Follow along with Roman’s road to launch at nasa.gov/roman, and virtually tour the Roman observatory here.
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The Belgian Royal Family attended a Te Deum at St Michel & St Gudula Cathedral and presided over military parade on occasion of the celebration of Belgian National Day! 🇧🇪
TM the King and Queen and TRH the Crown Princess and Infanta Sofía have attended World Cup Final Match between Spain and Argentina. Spain is the new World Champion after beating Argentina 1-0 ¡Viva España! 🇪🇸
On Sunday, June 21, NASA’s Pegasus barge arrived at the Launch Complex 39 turn basin at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Our next major space telescope has arrived at the launch site! On Sunday, June 21, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope completed its voyage from our Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland down to our Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Now, the observatory will undergo final preparations before liftoff on Sunday, Aug. 30.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was carefully packed into a protective container for its eight-day voyage to the launch site.
Engineers loaded Roman into a protective container and drove it to the Port of Baltimore. Over the course of the next eight days, the observatory traveled over 800 nautical miles down the Atlantic coast on NASA’s Pegasus barge to its new temporary home in Florida. Roman also brought a buddy along for the ride: a weather cover for the Artemis III SLS (Space Launch System) core stage.
A variety of specialists attended the Roman observatory’s journey from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., to the port it shipped from at Baltimore. That includes tree trimmers who periodically cleared the path for the large transportation vehicle to pass through.
Upon arrival, technicians moved Roman into a massive airlock within Kennedy’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. This facility has an air filtration system that removes the contaminants that entered the building when the massive door opened. This step protects the spacecraft when it comes out of its transportation container.
Fittingly, our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope traveled to the launch site in a special transport vehicle called the CHARIOT (Conditioned Housing for Air, Road, Imaging optics assembly, and Observatory Transport) on a barge known as the Pegasus.
Next up is a grand unboxing! Technicians will use powerful cranes to move Roman to its work platform, called the Pantheon. The team will test Roman’s solar panels and inspect its insulation and thermal blankets to ensure the observatory is fully protected and flight ready. Then they’ll load about 290 gallons (roughly 1,100 liters) of hydrazine fuel into the tanks.
Once in space, Roman will deliver mind-boggling observations at a rapid rate. The mission will pair a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to scan vast, deep swaths of sky. That will help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, exoplanets, and much more. Since each of Roman’s surveys will sample such a large volume of the cosmos, very little will be beyond Roman’s reach.
Follow along with Roman’s road to launch at science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman.
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Princess Elizabeth, Princess Margaret, Princess Alexandra & Lady Pamela Mountbatten as bridesmaids in 1946 ~ Savannah Phillips, Isla Phillips & Georgina Sperling as bridesmaids in 2026
June 2, 2026: Princess Leonor completed the Basic Parachuting Course at the Méndez Parada Military Parachuting School, located at the Alcantarilla Air Base (Murcia). This training complements the military instruction she is currently receiving at the General Academy of the Air and Space Force (AGA).
During the course, the Princess took part alongside nearly fifty fellow AGA cadets in the training required to perform automatic parachute jumps. This qualification is the same one received by members of various airborne-capable units of the Air and Space Force, as well as the Army, the Navy, and the Civil Guard.
After successfully completing the training program, the Princess of Asturias and the other participants were awarded both the certification diploma and the Parachute Hunter badge.
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