NASA successfully launches Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, to unravel new mysteries of universe

NASA successfully launched its newest space telescope—the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope—aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida on Sunday. The new space telescope will help scientists probe the nature of dark matter, dark energy, and other mysteries of the universe.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is about the size of a tour bus, lifted off on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. The 18,000-pound spacecraft is now on a million-mile journey that will take it to its new home in space, where it will survey vast areas of the universe to study dark energy, dark matter and exoplanets, with a field of view far larger than that of the Hubble.

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be finally placed in its final orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point known as L2, where the competing gravitational pulls of the Earth and the Sun will keep it steady while using minimal fuel. The James Webb Space Telescope also orbits at this point, which gives the spacecraft an unobstructed view of the sky.

Roman was initially designed as a spy telescope for the National Reconnaissance Office but was donated to NASA later. It was named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer who was known as the ‘Mother of Hubble’ for championing the iconic Hubble Space Telescope. Her namesake observatory will have the sharpness of Hubble, but its field of view is 100 times larger, which will enable it to cover huge swaths of the sky at once.

Telescope to help uncover cosmic mysteries

Roman is on a kind of ghost hunt, searching for more evidence of dark matter—mysterious, invisible stuff whose gravitational influence appears to hold galaxies together and define the overarching structure of the cosmos. It will also study how gravity subtly affects the path of light along great distances throughout a massive survey of the sky.

Roman will also search for planets outside our solar system. More than 6,000 exoplanets have been identified since astronomers confirmed their existence in the 1990s. NASA expects to identify more than 100,000 of them with Roman’s help by identifying dips in starlight caused by a planet passing in front of its own star.

Roman to send 1.4 terabytes of raw data each day

The telescope will beam back 1.4 terabytes of raw science data each day, using a refrigerator-sized high-gain antenna. The data will be available immediately to scientists and the public.

Because of the massive amounts of data, NASA is making it available to anyone through a cloud-based system called Roman Nexus. This will make this mission unique, as anyone can look at the raw data and find new discoveries.

Astronomers will also use Roman’s observations to uncover dark energy, the strange force that is believed to drive the expansion of the universe.

Scientists' understanding of dark energy comes from observations of a kind of exploding star known as a Type Ia supernova. These supernovas appear to shine at known and predictable brightness throughout the cosmos, giving them the nickname of 'standard candles'. By cataloguing even more of these supernovas, scientists hope to develop a better understanding of how dark energy works, which could fundamentally change the way astronomers view the universe.