Roman’s first test image shows hundreds of stars as green rings of light. After a few more months of adjustment, it will capture images as sharp as Hubble’s but 100 times larger. (Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Tyler Desjardins (STScI)) Quick Facts What it is: Hundreds of stars, captured in the first Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope test image Where it is: An unknown section of space When shared: September 15, 2026 Imagine opening your eyes for the first time and seeing that. The sky is full of green donuts. This was the view greeted by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which just activated its powerful 300-megapixel infrared camera for the first time. The telescope, which launched into space on August 30, is in the middle of a months-long commissioning process, in which NASA scientists test and tune each of the spacecraft’s instruments as it undertakes a million-mile (1.6 million kilometer) journey to the Lagrange point L2, an orbital orbit. “parking spot” where the competing gravity of the Earth and Sun will hold Roman in place, along with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other scientific spacecraft. Latest videos from Live Science Roman’s camera system, known as the Wide Field Instrument (WFI), hasn’t come into full focus yet, so the stars look like lime-colored loops in this first test image. But so far, all systems are working as they should, according to a NASA statement. By the time Roman is ready to transmit its first full scientific images in early 2027, it will be capturing cosmic snapshots as sharp and detailed as those from the Hubble Space Telescope, but each of Roman’s images will cover an area 100 times larger than Hubble’s. “After years of efforts to build and test the instrument on the ground, we now have confirmation that it is operational in space. This is a huge milestone,” Josh Schlieder, WFI chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the statement. “There is a lot to do, but we are on the path to innovative science.” (Image credit: NASA) The wavy rows of squares in the new image are key to Roman’s photo-taking power. Each square represents one of Roman’s 18 detectors, which translate photons from distant light sources into electrical signals that encode huge images of the universe. Scientists are preparing for the telescope to transmit about 1.4 terabytes of data (about five to 10 times the storage capacity of an average smartphone) back to Earth every day. Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. With all that data, NASA scientists hope Roman will push the boundaries of some of astronomy’s biggest mysteries. Planned long-term studies of distant galaxies will help scientists discover new objects and calculate the expansion of the universe, potentially shedding new light on the phenomenon of dark energy. The telescope will also contribute to the search for extraterrestrial life. By selectively blocking starlight with Roman’s built-in coronagraph (another instrument NASA successfully tested this week), the telescope will be able to zoom in on exoplanets with unprecedented precision, without stellar reflections. These observations could increase the number of known alien worlds from the current count of more than 6,000 to more than 100,000 by the end of Roman’s planned 10-year mission. But in one last bit of good news, it now looks likely that that 10-year mission will be doubled. According to NASA, a successful booster burn (combined with additional fuel loaded into the spacecraft at launch) means Roman may have 22 years of energy instead of 10. Like Hubble, which has continued to operate well beyond the initial parameters of its mission, Roman may be an orbital gift that keeps on giving for decades. Are you a UFO fan? Find out with our alien quiz! TOPICS space photo of the week NASA
