WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - NASA has announced that its Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, designed to open an entirely new window on the universe, will be launched in early September, ahead of the agency's commitment to flight no later than May 2027.
'Roman's accelerated development is a true success story of what we can achieve when public investment, institutional expertise, and private enterprise come together to take on the near-impossible missions that change the world,' said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.
Announcing the update at a news conference at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, he said Roman will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA and SpaceX will share more information about a specific launch date later.
Named after NASA's first chief astronomer, the 'mother of the Hubble Space Telescope,' the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble's, potentially measuring light from a billion galaxies in its lifetime. This observatory will also be able to block starlight to directly see exoplanets and planet-forming disks, complete a statistical census of planetary systems in our galaxy, and settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics.
Roman will pair a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to survey deep, vast swaths of sky. Roman's unprecedented observational capability will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to explore all kinds of cosmic topics.
By the end of its five-year primary mission, Roman is expected to amass a 20,000-terabyte data archive. Scientists can draw on it to identify and study 100,000 exoplanets, hundreds of millions of galaxies, billions of stars, and rare objects and phenomena - including some that astronomers have never witnessed before.
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