NASA’s next flagship space observatory is almost ready for launch. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to lift off aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida from 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 30. Launching roughly nine months ahead of NASA’s previous schedule, Roman is expected to become one of the most powerful astronomy missions ever built — not because it will see farther than the James Webb Space Telescope, but because it will see more of the universe at once. “Roman is going to do things that currently are impossible,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division, in a NASA press conference on July 29. “It’s going to launch … nine months in advance, and that of itself is an amazing feat.”
Here are 10 things to know before launch.
1. It’s Named After The ‘Mother Of Hubble’
The telescope honors Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer and one of the driving forces behind the agency’s space astronomy program. Her vision of placing telescopes above Earth’s atmosphere laid the foundation for NASA’s fleet of observatories, including Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, Webb and now Roman. “Dr. Roman was a brilliant astronomer — she realized how much power we would have if we could get telescopes up above Earth’s atmosphere, which otherwise gets in the way of our observations from the ground, and how it could complement the astronomy we can do from the ground,” said Domagal-Goldman.
2. Roman Doesn’t Replace Hubble Or Webb
Instead, it complements them. Domagal-Goldman compares NASA’s space telescopes to photographing a forest. Hubble and Webb can zoom in on individual trees, leaves and birds. Roman “does both; it has that wide-angle view of the forest and the sharpness to see the birds and leaves on those trees.” Instead of focusing on individual objects, Roman will reveal how those objects fit into the wider universe. The forest is the known universe, and those birds and trees are supernova, galaxies, planets and stars.
3. It Will Map More Than Two Billion Galaxies
Roman’s largest survey will chart more than two billion galaxies across cosmic time, creating the biggest panoramic maps of the universe ever produced from space. Its Wide Field Instrument combines the same 2.4-meter (7.9-foot) mirror size as Hubble with a field of view more than 100 times larger, allowing it to survey enormous areas of the sky far faster than any previous NASA space observatory.
4. The Images Will Be Almost Impossible To Comprehend
Roman’s biggest survey will produce images on a staggering scale. “We would need over half a million 4K TVs to fully display the single Roman image from our largest survey,” said Julie McEnery, the mission’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “Those TVs would cover 45 Manhattan city blocks, or fully cover El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.”
5. It Could Discover 100,000 New Planets
Roman will monitor hundreds of millions of stars in the Milky Way using gravitational microlensing and other techniques to search for exoplanets. Unlike Kepler and TESS, which excel at finding planets orbiting close to their stars, Roman will search for colder, more distant worlds similar to those in our own outer solar system. McEnery calls it “the largest census we’ve ever done of planets outside our own solar system.”
6. It May Help Solve The Mystery Of Dark Energy
Astronomers still don’t know why the universe’s expansion is accelerating. By mapping billions of galaxies, measuring gravitational lensing and observing thousands of Type Ia supernovae, Roman will provide the most detailed measurements yet of dark energy and dark matter, helping scientists test whether today’s standard model of cosmology is complete.
7. It Will Find Things Astronomers Aren’t Even Looking For
One reason astronomers are so excited is that Roman’s enormous surveys are expected to reveal phenomena no one anticipated. “Roman’s vast reach will allow us to find the weird, the rare, and the unusual,” said McEnery, pointing to isolated black holes, rogue planets and runaway supermassive black holes. “We’ll redefine what it means to find a needle in a haystack.” She added that the discoveries she’s most excited about are the ones nobody can predict.
8. Launch Is Only The Beginning
Although the Falcon Heavy launch is the headline event, Roman won’t begin science immediately. After separation from the rocket, engineers will spend about 100 days deploying the observatory, testing its systems, aligning its optics and calibrating its instruments before regular science operations begin. “We’ve practiced this over and over and over again,” said integration and test scientist Jeremy Perkins, who will help oversee commissioning after launch.
9. It Will Return An Enormous Amount Of Data
Roman is expected to transmit around a terabyte of science data to Earth every day. Perkins compares that to “streaming a million songs from a million miles from Earth.” That torrent of observations will eventually require machine learning and advanced computing to help astronomers identify the most interesting discoveries hidden within the mission’s vast datasets.
10. Nobody Knows What Roman’s Biggest Discovery Will Be
Like Hubble before it, Roman is expected to answer questions astronomers haven’t even thought to ask yet. “What makes me most excited about Roman is the discovery potential,” McEnery said. “I very much hope — and in fact expect — that the most exciting things from Roman will be a surprise.”
After years of development and an unusually early finish for a flagship NASA mission, the countdown is almost over. If all goes to plan, Roman will launch on Aug. 30 and begin creating the largest panoramic maps of the universe ever made — providing astronomers with a new roadmap for exploring everything from nearby exoplanets to the evolution of the cosmos.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
