Washington, February 19 – A seven-year-old girl in Lucknow stood in her backyard at dawn in October 1957, watching Sputnik streak across the sky. Nearly seven decades later, that child would help operate some of NASA’s most complex space telescopes, from Hubble to James Webb.
“The story begins in October 1957, when I was 7 years old, and my grandmother ordered the entire family, including my 3-year-old sister, all the servants and their families, to gather at dawn in the backyard of our home and watch Sputnik pass across the clear night sky of Lucknow,” Hashima Hasan wrote in a personal account released by NASA on Wednesday.
“That morning, as I saw Sputnik and the dark, starry sky, I dreamt of becoming a space scientist.”
Hasan went on to earn a scholarship to the University of Oxford, earning a doctorate in theoretical nuclear physics in 1976. “The path to a traditional academic career for a female scientist was challenging, further complicated by social pressures,” she said. After postdoctoral work and a faculty position across three continents, she moved to the United States in 1985 with her husband and two infant sons.
At the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, she accepted a research position to write software to simulate the optics of NASA’s newest telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope. Under Dr. Christopher Burrows, she wrote the Telescope Image Modelling (TIM) software.
“We didn’t realize that after the launch of Hubble, TIM would be crucial in our analysis of the first images, identifying and characterizing the spherical aberration, monitoring the telescope’s focus, and creating image simulations to help scientists analyze their data,” she wrote.
Hasan was appointed as the Optical Telescope Assembly scientist. She said she had “the unique distinction of being the first and only OTA scientist whose task was to keep the Hubble ‘in focus’ until a solution could be designed.” Every three months, adjustments were needed to maintain the telescope’s best focus.
“I am proud to be part of the NASA team that turned adversity into victory. The story of Hubble is a tribute to NASA’s ‘can-do’ attitude,” she said, praising the astronauts who serviced Hubble five times.
In 1994, she joined NASA Headquarters as a visiting senior scientist under Dr. Edward Weiler. By 1999, she became a civil servant and was appointed program scientist for Hubble, overseeing key instruments and participating in servicing missions SM3A and SM3B.
Her involvement with the James Webb Space Telescope began in 1995, when it was known as the Next Generation Space Telescope. She later served as the NGST program scientist from 1999 to 2001 and the JWST program scientist from 2011 to 2015. She led early technology development and complex negotiations with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency over the Mid-InfraRed Instrument.
“We were conducting a review of proposals for MIRI management on the fateful day, September 11, 2001. Again, we didn’t let adversity stop us, and today MIRI and all the other science instruments are installed on JWST,” she wrote.
She called JWST “another example of ‘Explore as One,’ where scientists, engineers, private industry, and non-US space agencies have come together.”
“I would like all readers to pursue their dreams as I have, and not to be discouraged as we continue to explore the Universe. The sky belongs to all of us,” Hasan said.
Hasan has served as NASA program scientist for multiple missions and as deputy program scientist for JWST.