NASA’s $4.3 billion Roman Space Telescope launched Sunday atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, beginning a three-month journey to a point in space a million miles from Earth where it will map the large-scale structure of the cosmos with a 300-megapixel wide-field camera. Using a Hubble-class mirror originally built for a spy satellite, Roman will search for clues about the nature of repulsive dark energy, which is accelerating the expansion of the universe. in addition to investigating the distribution of the equally mysterious dark matter, which holds galaxies together and represents most of their mass. A second instrument, an experimental coronagraph with shape-changing mirrors that can dim the glare of distant suns, will allow astronomers to analyze light reflected from much fainter Jupiter-sized planets to tease out details about their chemical composition. NASA’s $4.3 billion Roman Space Telescope was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, beginning a three-month journey to a point in space one million miles from Earth. John Pisani/Spaceflight Now At the same time, Roman’s wide-field camera will look for stars that periodically dim as planets pass in front of them, as seen from the telescope. To date, about 6,200 exoplanets have been discovered. By the end of Roman’s mission, that number is expected to exceed 100,000. Along with a treasure trove of exoplanets, Roman is expected to catalog some 20 billion stars, 2 billion or more individual galaxies, tens of thousands of supernova explosions, and countless transient events such as flares generated by stars torn apart by close encounters with black holes. “Roman is going to revolutionize the way we look at our universe,” NASA chief scientist Nicky Fox said after the launch. “It’s going to measure dark matter, which is like the structure of the universe; it’s what you can’t see, but we know it’s there.” It will measure dark energy, which somehow powers the universe. [There is] A kind of cosmic fight between dark matter that wants to unite things and dark energy that wants to separate them. AND [Roman] will allow us to finally explain our universe and understand our place in it.” In addition, he said, the telescope will find “tens of thousands of exoplanets, planets we don’t even know are there, billions of galaxies, tens of billions of stars. It’s just a spectacular mission.” President Trump, whose administration attempted to reduce funding for Roman in previous rounds of proposed budget cuts, called out NASA chief Jared Isaacman during a post-launch news conference at the Florida spaceport, prompting the administrator to hold his phone up to a microphone so the president could address the room. “I just want to thank everyone and congratulate you all,” Trump said. “Wow, he looked beautiful on TV. I just called Jared to find out, is there anything negative I should know about? …He said, ‘No, it looks great.’ It couldn’t be better and it was another great success.” “So, Jared is doing a fantastic job, you are doing a fantastic job and I’m giving you all that money.” “Well, Mr. President, you have a lot of smiling people in the room right now who are very happy to hear those words,” Isaacman responded. “We’ll put it to excellent use.” The long-awaited flight began at 7:26 a.m. EDT when Falcon Heavy’s three core stages, each powered by nine kerosene-burning Merlin engines, roared to life, accelerated to more than five million pounds of thrust, and rode majestically away from historic Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. It was only the 13th flight of a Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in SpaceX’s inventory, and provided a spectacular weekend sky show for area residents, tourists and space center workers as it sped away on an eastward trajectory over the Atlantic Ocean. An artist’s impression of NASA’s $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space. Telescope at the station one million miles from Earth. NASA The rocket’s two side boosters, one making its first flight and the other its third, shut down and took off 2 1/2 minutes after liftoff. Both boosters then rotated, reversed course, and flew back to the target landings at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Meanwhile, the core stage continued firing for another minute and a half, then it also shut down and fell into the Atlantic as planned after using all its power. The 18,000-pound Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named after NASA’s first chief astronomer who long championed the value of space telescopes, was released to fly on its own 31 minutes after liftoff. Shortly after, the telescope’s solar panels deployed as planned. The observatory heads to Lagrange Point No. 2, about a million miles away on the opposite side. The James Webb Space Telescope is stationed in the same region. It will take about 100 days to reach L2. Once on the station, Roman will study the effects of dark matter, the mysterious substance that permeates the universe, holds galaxies and galactic clusters together and accounts for most of the mass in the cosmos. significant information about the nature of equally mysterious dark energy, a repulsive force presumably present since the Big Bang that became dominant about 5 billion years ago as the universe expanded and shrank. Since then, the expansion of the cosmos has been accelerating. Although no one yet knows what dark energy really is, Roman may help resolve a conflict between the strength of the force in the early universe, as measured by probes studying the 3-degree afterglow from immediately after the Big Bang. The consequences, compared to Hubble observations of a specific type of supernova, indicate a slightly different value. The discrepancy, known as “the Hubble strain,” indicates a potentially serious flaw in the Standard Model of cosmology, the current understanding of how the universe and everything in it has evolved. It could even indicate that dark energy is not the constant force it is believed to be, but could change somewhat over time. “We’re probably not going to confirm the standard model of how the universe works,” Julie McEnery, Roman Space. “It is very likely that we will prove our standard model wrong and put us on the path to discovering how our universe really works,” said the senior Telescope project scientist. it’s hard to get [a better question than] The fundamental nature of your universe!” Roman’s wide-field camera is one of two instruments aboard the spacecraft. The other is an advanced coronagraph equipped with deformable mirrors that can block the glare of a star to detect the much fainter light reflected by the atmosphere of an orbiting planet. Roman’s coronagraph is expected to detect Jupiter-sized planets orbiting Earth-like stars. By analyzing that reflected light, researchers can determine the elemental composition of those atmospheres. “We think we will be able to detect exoplanets that are about 100 million times fainter than their stars, and with that ability, we hope to see… a Jupiter twin around a nearby star using visible light reflected from its cloud tops for the first time,” said Vanessa Bailey, a Roman coronagraph instrument scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We will then be able to use that light to study the composition of its atmosphere.” tail, it is one of the most complex instruments ever launched. If the technology works, a more sophisticated version could lead to a future space telescope capable of directly imaging Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars and collecting spectra that could be analyzed for chemical signs of biological activity. More from CBS News Go deeper with The Free Press In:
