NASA is preparing to launch its next major space telescope Sunday morning, a mission scientists say will help answer some of the biggest questions about the uni
NASA is preparing to launch its next major space telescope Sunday morning, a mission scientists say will help answer some of the biggest questions about the universe while capturing an unprecedented amount of data.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named for NASA astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, is set to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center. NASA mission systems engineer Mark Melton said the telescope is “NASA’s next big telescope following along in the footsteps of the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.”
Melton said Roman is designed to map large portions of the sky to tackle questions including, “How has the universe expanded over time? How has it grown? And how have dark matter and dark energy impacted that? And also, how common are planetary systems like ours and our galaxy?”
“I think the coolest thing for me is that Roman, with these huge surveys, will literally be finding billions, billions of galaxies,” Melton said.
He said Roman’s wide field of view will open up new opportunities for discovery. “There are going to be so many little interesting things out there that we’ve never seen before because we haven’t had the wide field of view and the large maps of the sky,” Melton said. “So I’m excited for that discovery space. What science are we gonna find? What new question are we gonna ask that scientists haven’t even thought to ask yet because they think they understand how the universe works in that way?”
Early in the mission, Roman will conduct a roughly 30-day survey of the center of the Milky Way, Melton said. “We’re doing a survey early in the mission, about a 30-day survey of the center of our galaxy, and we’ll be able to map 200 billion stars,” he said.
Roman will study in infrared, which Melton said will allow the telescope to see through dust across the galaxy. “We study through infrared light so we can see through the dust in the galaxy all the way to the other side,” he said. “This is the largest map of the galaxy that anyone has ever made.”
Melton said Roman’s stability will allow it to map the sky far faster than Hubble. “Because of the stability that we’ve built into this telescope, we can actually map the sky at 1,000 times faster than Hubble could ever do,” he said, adding that Roman will take images of “over 12% of the full sky.”
After launch, the mission will include a commissioning period as the telescope travels to its final orbit. “We have about a 100 day commissioning period as we fly out to our final orbit,” Melton said. He said the first image is expected “at the end of this calendar year,” followed by science observations beginning “in the new year.”
Once science operations begin, Roman is expected to send down “11 terabits of data every day,” Melton said.
NASA will stream the launch Sunday morning, and updates will be available at “nasa.gov slash Roman,” Melton said.
