NASA launches Nancy Grace Roman telescope to study the Universe

NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The spacecraft will study distant planets, supernovae, black holes and conduct large-scale surveys of the Universe, Deutsche Welle English reports.

Journey to the observation point

The telescope is expected to reach its destination about 1.6 million kilometers from Earth in approximately one month. The mission’s total budget exceeds $4 billion, and the first images are expected to arrive on Earth in early 2027.

According to NASA, Roman will be able to detect thousands of supernovae, tens of thousands of planets, billions of galaxies and tens of billions of stars. NASA Science Mission Directorate head Nicky Fox said the telescope’s wide field of view will enable observations that were previously unavailable.

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Faster sky surveys

Roman will operate on a principle similar to that of the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990. At the same time, the new spacecraft will be able to complete in one month the volume of sky surveys that Hubble would take a century to conduct.

Scientists expect Roman to generate more than 500 terabytes of data annually. By comparison, Hubble collected approximately 400 terabytes of information over more than three decades of operation in space. Project senior scientist Julie McEnery said the telescope’s broad coverage will help find rare and unusual cosmic objects.

In honor of Nancy Grace Roman

The telescope was named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first head of astronomy, who held the position in the 1960s and 1970s. Roman became the first NASA space telescope named after a woman. It will complement observations by Hubble and the James Webb telescope, launched in late 2021, which operates in other wavelength ranges.