NASA is preparing to launch a powerful new telescope Sunday that could change what we know about the universe.<\/p>\n
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to lift off Sunday morning, Aug. 30, from NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Liftoff is targeted for 7:26 a.m. EDT, weather permitting.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the best tool we have ever developed to study the universe,\u201d Paganini said.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9 WRAL<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA much bigger view of space<\/p>\n
Unlike a backyard telescope, Roman is designed to survey enormous areas of space while capturing detailed images.<\/p>\n
NASA says Roman will have a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble\u2019s. Paganini compared the scale of its primary camera to 32 4K televisions displaying a single image.\u00a0The telescope is expected to generate about 1.4 terabytes of data every day.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCould Roman change what we know about the universe?<\/p>\n
One of the biggest questions Roman will tackle is what the universe is actually made of.\u00a0Ordinary matter, everything we can see, including stars, planets and people \u2014 makes up only a small portion of the universe. The rest is dominated by mysterious dark matter and dark energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually don’t quite know what the universe is made of,\u201d Paganini said.<\/p>\n
Roman\u2019s observations could provide new clues and potentially challenge what scientists currently believe about the cosmos.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNamed for a NASA pioneer<\/p>\n
The telescope is named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA\u2019s first chief astronomer and a pioneer in space-based astronomy.\u00a0Paganini said Roman understood that some of astronomy\u2019s biggest questions could only be answered by putting telescopes above Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a trailblazer,\u201d he said.\u00a0Her work helped pave the way for space telescopes including Hubble.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWhen will we see the first images?<\/p>\n
The first images won’t come immediately after launch.<\/p>\n
Roman will undergo a commissioning period of about three months as engineers make sure its instruments and optics are working as expected.\u00a0Once science operations begin, the data will eventually be publicly available.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don’t have to be with NASA in order to take a look at the data, analyze it,\u201d Paganini said.<\/p>\n
That means students and researchers in North Carolina and around the world will be able to take part in the discoveries.<\/p>\n
After years of preparation, the search for answers to some of humanity\u2019s biggest questions is about to begin.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo Roman, go NASA,\u201d Paganini said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA is preparing to launch a powerful new telescope Sunday that could change what we know about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":828113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[718,79,9175,1513,2615],"class_list":["post-828112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space-exploration","tag-spacex","tag-telescope"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=828112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/828113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}