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NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Arrives In Florida

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3 weeks ago
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has arrived at Kennedy Space Center ahead of a Falcon Heavy launch targeted for no earlier than August 30. The observatory will survey the sky about 1,000 times faster than Hubble with a field of view at least 100 times wider, helping scientists study dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets. Spaceflight Now reports: NASA's next great observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, arrived at the Kennedy Space Center aboard the agency's massive Pegasus barge late Sunday morning. The spacecraft was nestled inside its protective case, which NASA nicknamed the "Chariot" in keeping with the "Roman" theme. That said, telescope is named not for the ancient empire, but instead for NASA's first Chief of Astronomy, Nancy Grace Roman. "She was a key person in our exploration of space. She understood that in order to better understand the universe, you have to go in space," said Lucas Paganini, the program executive for Roman. "That's why she's called the 'Mother of Hubble' because she made Hubble possible." [...] Roman is designed to operate near a fixed point in space called Lagrange Point 2, about 1.5 million km away from the Earth on the side opposite the Sun. It's designed to operate there for a minimum of five years, but Paganini said with the propellant onboard, it will likely last for 10 years or more. The telescope is+ equipped with a 300 megapixel camera called the Wide Field Instrument, which features 18 detectors. It was developed by BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace). "It's going to allow us to observe at least 100 times wider field of view than what we can do with Hubble. Same resolution, but a wider area, 1000 times faster," Paganini said. "So what takes Roman a year to observe, it would take Hubble thousands of years. So it's definitely much more efficient." The observatory also features a chronograph instrument, developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will allow Roman to observe the faint light of exoplanets near their stars. Paganini said Roman will also help scientists better understand dark matter and dark energy, the combination of which he calls the "dark universe." "100 years ago, we discovered that the universe was expanding. 25 years ago, we discovered that it was expanding at an accelerated pace and that's what led to a Nobel Prize," Paganini said. "What we don't quite know yet is if that acceleration is changing in ways. We don't know if it's actually dark energy, what is producing it, or is it simply that we don't understand gravity at all. "So eventually, we'll see if the laws of physics that we use these days are the right ones for what we are observing. But at the end is, we're trying to understand a very human question, which is where do we come from and where are wea heading in this universe that is our neighborhood?"

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