NASA is preparing to launch a powerful new telescope on Sunday that could change what we know about the universe. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to lift off Sunday morning, August 30, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Takeoff is scheduled 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. © WRAL A much wider view of space Unlike a home telescope, Roman is designed to study huge areas of space while capturing detailed images. NASA says Roman will have a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble. Paganini compared the scale of its main camera to 32 4K televisions displaying a single image. The telescope is expected to generate about 1.4 terabytes of data each 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 address is what the universe is really 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 don’t actually know very well 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 after a NASA pioneer The telescope is named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer and a pioneer in space astronomy. Paganini said Roman understood that some of the most important questions in astronomy could only be answered by placing telescopes above the Earth’s atmosphere. “She was a pioneer,” he said. His work helped pave the way for space telescopes, including Hubble. When will we see the first images? The first images will not appear immediately after launch. Roman will undergo a commissioning period of approximately three months as engineers ensure its instruments and optics function as expected. Once scientific operations begin, the data will eventually be publicly available. “You don’t have to be at NASA to see the data and analyze it,” Paganini said. That means students and researchers from North Carolina and around the world will be able to participate in the discoveries. After years of preparation, the search for answers to some of humanity’s most important questions is about to begin. “Go to Roman, go to NASA,” Paganini said.
