NASA is preparing to launch a powerful new telescope Sunday that could change what we know about the universe.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to lift off Sunday morning, Aug. 30, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Liftoff is targeted for 7:26 a.m. EDT, weather permitting.
For Lucas Paganini, program executive for the Roman mission, the launch marks the culmination of years of work and the beginning of a new era for astronomy.
“This is the best tool we have ever developed to study the universe,” Paganini said.
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A much bigger view of space
Unlike a backyard telescope, Roman is designed to survey enormous areas of space while capturing detailed images.
NASA says Roman will have a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s. Paganini compared the scale of its primary camera to 32 4K televisions displaying a single image. The telescope is expected to generate about 1.4 terabytes of data every day.
Roman will map billions of galaxies and stars and could discover thousands of planets beyond our solar system. It will also help scientists study dark matter, dark energy and how galaxies form and evolve.
Could Roman change what we know about the universe?
One of the biggest questions Roman will tackle is what the universe is actually made of. Ordinary matter, everything we can see, including stars, planets and people — makes up only a small portion of the universe. The rest is dominated by mysterious dark matter and dark energy.
“We actually don’t quite know what the universe is made of,” Paganini said.
Roman’s observations could provide new clues and potentially challenge what scientists currently believe about the cosmos.
Named for a NASA pioneer
The telescope is named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer and a pioneer in space-based astronomy. Paganini said Roman understood that some of astronomy’s biggest questions could only be answered by putting telescopes above Earth’s atmosphere.
“She was a trailblazer,” he said. Her work helped pave the way for space telescopes including Hubble.
When will we see the first images?
The first images won’t come immediately after launch.
Roman will undergo a commissioning period of about three months as engineers make sure its instruments and optics are working as expected. Once science operations begin, the data will eventually be publicly available.
“You don’t have to be with NASA in order to take a look at the data, analyze it,” Paganini said.
That means students and researchers in North Carolina and around the world will be able to take part in the discoveries.
After years of preparation, the search for answers to some of humanity’s biggest questions is about to begin.
“Go Roman, go NASA,” Paganini said.