WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has begun a three-month, million-mile journey to its final orbit with the mission to reveal the universe's darkest secrets.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, carrying the highly powerful telescope costing approximately $4 billion, was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday.
The Roman telescope will have a deep, panoramic view of the cosmos, generating never-before-seen pictures that will revolutionize human understanding of the universe.
Roman pairs a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to explore vast swaths of the sky and probe deeply into cosmic history. This flagship mission will help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, and worlds outside of our solar system known as exoplanets. Its surveys will support a broad range of research extending far beyond the mission's main science goals.
'Roman is exactly the kind of success story we want to see across NASA,' said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. 'Delivered ahead of schedule and on budget, this mission reflects more than a decade of dedication from the NASA workforce and our industry partners. Now, Roman will give us a new atlas of the universe, push the boundaries of discovery, and demonstrate what is possible when America's space program pairs bold ambition with disciplined execution.'
The ground control team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, began receiving telemetry data from Roman seven minutes after launch. The Falcon Heavy rocket performed as expected, separating from the observatory 31 minutes into the flight, NASA said in a press release.
During launch and early orbit, Roman uses the Near Space Network's ground stations and relay satellites to exchange tracking, telemetry, and command data with ground controllers.
The Roman team also confirmed successful deployment of the observatory's solar panels and lower instrument sun shade an hour and 23 minutes after launch. Within the upcoming days, Roman's Coronagraph Instrument will demonstrate the technology that future missions like NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory concept could use to image Earth-like planets in the search for life in the universe. Roman's Coronagraph will take a giant step in that direction by snapping pictures of Jupiter-like planets.
A few weeks into Roman's voyage, its primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument, will activate. This 300-megapixel infrared camera has 18 4K detectors, each about the size of a saltine cracker. These detectors collect photons of light that will be decoded into crisp cosmic panoramas. It will rapidly scan the sky without needing substantial time between separate observations. The Roman telescope is designed to survey the universe a thousand times faster than NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
Throughout the rest of Roman's three-month commissioning period, scientists will run the instruments through a series of calibrations and tests. NASA anticipates releasing Roman's first images by early 2027.
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