NASA's Roman Space Telescope is just one of a few missions named after real-life women

NASA's next big space telescope is not only meant to unlock some of the mysteries of dark energy.

It also is a pioneer in the naming of missions.

Scientific American recently said that the observatory, which launched on Aug.

30 , is the first ever space telescope ever named after a real-life woman: American astronomer Nancy Grace Roman , who supported development of the iconic Hubble Space Telescope and was NASA's first head of astronomy in the 1960s.

The story is very different when it comes to men.

For example, NASA's "Great Observatories," which launched between 1990 and 2003, were all named after famous U.S. male astronomers or physicists: the Hubble Space Telescope (Edwin Hubble), the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (Arthur Compton), the Chandra X-ray Observatory (Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar) and the Spitzer Space Telescope (Lyman Spitzer).

Nancy Grace Roman briefs Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin on celestial objects in Washington, D.C. in 1965.

Aldrin would go on to complete three spacewalks and become the second person to walk on the moon. (Image credit: NASA) Indeed, relatively few spacecraft of any kind have borne female names over the years — and most of the ones that did were not honoring actual, real-life people.

For instance, a number of missions with female names took them from mythology (e.g., NASA's Europa Clipper and China's Chang'e moon probes ).

Others used female names not attached to particular individuals (such as NASA's Clementine moon mission, and the European Space Agency 's LISA, which is an acronym for "Laser Intraferometer Space Antenna.") A notable exception is Sojourner , the mini-rover on NASA's Mars Pathfinder lander mission that was made famous again by the 2015 film "The Martian;" it's named after Sojourner Truth , a Civil War-era abolitionist.

Sojourner's name was selected in 1995 from a worldwide naming contest for students and suggested by 12-year-old Valerie Ambroise of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

Some other notable examples of missions honoring real-life women include: ESA's long-delayed ExoMars rover Rosalind Franklin , which is now set to launch to Mars in 2028.

It's named after a British scientist who contributed to discovering the structure of DNA. (Part of the rover's mission is to analyze potential biosignatures on the Red Planet's surface.) The Cygnus International Space Station (ISS) resupply program, which is managed by Northrop Grumman.

Multiple Cygnus freighters have been named after female NASA astronauts, including Janice E.