A new space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, is set to launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., atop a Falcon Heavy rocket at 7:26 a.m. on Sunday morning. Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, known as the “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope,” this telescope will orbit 1.5 million kilometers away at a point called L2. It is equipped with various instruments, including a 2.4-meter mirror similar to Hubble, a coronagraph to block starlight and reveal distant planets, and a Wide Field Instrument capable of imaging a larger area than Hubble.
The telescope’s advanced camera can capture billions of stars, enabling a wide range of sky and stellar surveys. Scientists anticipate significant discoveries with this powerful instrument, such as the search for exoplanets. By employing methods like the transit method and microlensing, the telescope aims to study thousands of planets, including Earth-like ones.
Additionally, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will investigate dark matter and dark energy, which make up a substantial portion of the universe. Scientists hope to gain insights into these invisible components by studying galaxies and globular clusters. The mission will involve mapping out the distribution of dark matter and normal matter in hundreds of millions of galaxies, shedding light on the mysterious nature of dark energy and its role in the universe’s expansion.