Dr. Philomena Gloria Grodzka, 97, of Huntsville, passed away October 26, 2026, at Redstone Village under hospice care. She was a chemist and space scientist who was avidly curious about everything that caught her interest. She helped design and analyze some of the first experiments on how liquids and crystals behave in space. She also spent decades encouraging North Alabama students to take up science.
She was born May 27, 1929, in Hamtramck, Michigan, the daughter of Polish immigrants Stanley and Katherine Grodzki. To her family she was always Filka. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from Wayne University (now Wayne State University) in Detroit, and in 1961 a PhD in analytical chemistry from the University of Michigan. In 1965 she moved to Huntsville to join the Huntsville Research and Engineering Center of Lockheed Missiles & Space Company.
At Lockheed, working with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Philomena was among the early researchers in what was then called space processing. She was project scientist for the heat flow and convection demonstration aboard Apollo 14, and co-principal investigator for the heat flow and convection experiments aboard Apollo 17. Those experiments showed that in the near weightlessness of spaceflight, surface tension and the small motions of a spacecraft still kept liquids moving. These findings were reported in the journal Science.
She went on to study silver crystals grown aboard Skylab and to co-lead the Chemical Foams demonstration on the 1975 Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, the first joint U.S.–Soviet space flight.
Over her career she wrote dozens of technical papers and NASA reports. She was a named inventor on two U.S. patents, for an energy-saving crop-drying process and a solar-regenerated humidity controller. In 1977 the Alabama Section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics named her its Aerospace Engineer of the Year.
Philomena was equally devoted to Huntsville’s scientific community and youth science education. A longtime leader of the Huntsville Association of Technical Societies (HATS), she served as its executive coordinator and received its “Volunteer of the Century” recognition in 1996. She also chaired its STEDTRAIN committee, which awards seed grants for hands-on science projects in North Alabama classrooms. For years she chaired the membership committee of the Huntsville Alabama L5 Society, a chapter of the National Space Society, and she was honored by the National Space Club Huntsville for community service.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Garrett Clois Roberts (2014); her parents, Stanley and Katherine Grodzki; and her sister, Elizabeth Fortuna (2020).
The family thanks the staff of Redstone Village and Gentiva Hospice for their compassionate care.
A memorial service will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, November 6, 2026, at Laughlin Service Funeral Home, 2320 Bob Wallace Avenue, Huntsville.
