{"id":598449,"date":"2026-08-28T08:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T08:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/598449\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T08:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T08:40:10","slug":"nasas-latest-telescope-had-a-former-life-as-a-spy-satellite-short-wave-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/598449\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s latest telescope had a former life as a spy satellite : Short Wave : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An<\/p>\n

\n The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a NASA observatory designed to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics.<\/p>\n

Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio\/NASA<\/p>\n

hide caption\n <\/p>\n

toggle caption<\/p>\n

Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio\/NASA<\/p>\n

The new Nancy Grace Roman space telescope is slated to launch this weekend. It was originally built for the National Reconnaissance Office as a spy satellite, but was never launched. Instead, NRO gave it to NASA about 15 years ago. After some major modifications, it’s set to begin its five-year mission peering at new supernovas, distant galaxies and planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. It should help scientists get a better understanding of the mysterious force known as dark energy \u2013 which will tell us about the fate of the universe.<\/p>\n

If you liked this episode, check out Regina’s reporting demystifying the mysterious red dots<\/a> spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope.<\/p>\n

Interested in more space news? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify<\/a> and Apple Podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This episode was produced by Berly McCoy. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was Jimmy Keeley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a NASA observatory designed to settle essential questions in the areas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[85,46,141],"class_list":["post-598449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}