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<\/p>\nKey points<\/p>\n
NASA plans to launch the roughly US$4 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Sunday from Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, nine months ahead of schedule.
\nThe telescope’s main survey will take more than a year and aims to unlock the fundamental nature of dark matter and dark energy by studying over two billion galaxies.
\nRoman will also test whether Einstein’s theory of general relativity holds across billions of light-years and conduct one of the most comprehensive searches ever for exoplanets.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
NASA is preparing to launch its next flagship space observatory, one that scientists plan to use to investigate some \u2060of the universe’s \u2060biggest mysteries including dark energy and dark matter, while also testing gravity at vast scales and hunting for planets beyond our solar system.<\/p>\n
The launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a roughly US$4 billion ($5.6 billion) project, is planned for Sunday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with the observatory to be lofted into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The launch comes nine months ahead of schedule, according to \u200cUS space agency officials.<\/p>\n
Roman is a follow-on to the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, and the \u200cJames \u200cWebb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, and has capabilities that can expand on the knowledge gained by \u200cthose pioneering observatories, both of which continue to operate.<\/p>\n
The new telescope’s panoramic view of space and its \u2060rapid survey speeds offer the opportunity for scientists to study the cosmos as never before, with wide-field surveys examining its structure, composition and evolution.<\/p>\n
“Roman’s vast reach will allow us to find the weird, the rare and the unusual,” Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told reporters.<\/p>\n
“Roman’s primary instrument combines exquisite performance and sensitivity with the \u200bability to quickly and efficiently survey the large regions of the sky,” McEnery said.<\/p>\n
The telescope’s main survey will take more than a year, McEnery said.<\/p>\n
“The survey will contain over two billion galaxies and enable us to study how the structures in our \u2060universe \u2014 the stars, the galaxies, the clusters of galaxies \u2014 grew and evolved.<\/p>\n
“We’ll also measure how our universe has expanded over time. And these are the keys that will allow us to unlock the fundamental nature of dark matter and dark energy and the fabric of the universe itself,” McEnery said.<\/p>\n
The Big Bang event roughly 13.8 billion years ago initiated the universe, and it has been expanding ever since.<\/p>\n
Scientists in 1998 disclosed that this expansion was actually accelerating, with an invisible force called dark energy as the hypothesised reason.<\/p>\n
The universe’s contents include ordinary matter \u2014 stars, planets, gas, dust and all the familiar stuff on Earth \u2014 as well as dark matter and dark energy, whose physical nature remains unknown.<\/p>\n
Ordinary matter represents perhaps five percent of the contents.<\/p>\n
Dark matter, known through its gravitational influences on galaxies and stars, may represent about 27 percent. Dark energy may represent about \u200b68 percent.<\/p>\n
“The key questions are: Is dark energy simply a property of empty space that \u2060remains constant over time, or does it evolve in time?” cosmologist Mustapha Ishak of the University of \u2060Texas at Dallas, a member of Roman’s scientific collaboration, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
“The recent results from the DESI \u2014 Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument \u2014 collaboration indicate tantalising hints of a time evolution of dark energy. Could \u200bthe observed acceleration instead indicate that our theory of gravity needs modification on the largest scales? Answering these questions is one of the most important goals \u200cof modern cosmology,” Ishak said.<\/p>\n
Einstein’s theory<\/p>\n
Physicist Albert Einstein in 1915 presented his theory of general relativity explaining gravity, and it remains foundational.<\/p>\n
Roman will map how galaxies cluster and how matter bends light through a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.<\/p>\n
“These measurements allow us to test whether Einstein’s theory remains valid across billions of light-years or whether modifications to gravity (theory) are required,” said Ishak. “This is important because it addresses \u200cone of the most fundamental questions in physics: What law governs the universe on its largest scales?”<\/p>\n
To date, more than 6350 exoplanets \u2014 planets outside our solar system \u2014 have been discovered, as scientists search for evidence of potential life beyond Earth.<\/p>\n
Roman will conduct one of the most comprehensive searches ever for exoplanets. It is expected to discover thousands of new ones and provide the first statistical census of planetary systems similar to our own. \u200bIt also will demonstrate new technology to directly image some relatively nearby exoplanets.<\/p>\n
After launch and separation from the rocket, the telescope will travel toward a location called Lagrange Point 2, situated about a million miles (1.6 million km) from Earth, about four times the distance to the moon. Webb also resides at this orbital location. Hubble is in low-Earth orbit.<\/p>\n
Roman’s mission is \u200cplanned for five years, \u2060though NASA said the telescope may have enough fuel for five \u200badditional years. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration tried during both his first and second terms to reduce or eliminate funding for Roman, but Congress preserved it.<\/p>\n
The telescope is named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first \u200bchief astronomer. Roman died in 2018 at age 93.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key points NASA plans to launch the roughly US$4 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Sunday from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":["post-868563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}