NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has begun its mission into the cosmos, with the aim of discovering phenomena and objects that have so far been too faint or impossible to observe. For scientists, the observatory represents a “discovery machine” and could open a new window onto the universe.
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The launch took place on Sunday morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The rocket lifted off at 7:26 a.m. Eastern time, and about ten minutes later, the telescope reached orbit.
During its five-year mission, Roman will investigate some of the greatest cosmic mysteries, including dark energy and dark matter. The former is linked to the universe’s accelerating expansion, while the latter is thought to make up most of the matter in the cosmos, even though it cannot be seen directly.
The observatory is also expected to search for unknown galaxies, thousands of exoplanets and “rogue” planets that are not bound in orbit around any star.
One of Roman’s main features is its observational speed. It is expected to be more than 1,000 times faster than the Hubble Space Telescope and, unlike Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope, will be able to cover much larger areas of the sky in a short period of time.
NASA has described the mission as an effort to build a “new atlas of the universe.” To reach its final orbital position, Roman will travel for about three months. Its destination will be Lagrange Point 2, around 1.6 million kilometers from Earth, where the James Webb telescope is also located.
During the journey, the observatory’s instruments will be checked and the antenna that will send the collected data and images to Earth will be deployed. According to NASA, Roman is expected to transmit about one terabyte of data every day.
The search for planets beyond our solar system is one of the mission’s most promising objectives. The telescope will continuously observe selected areas of the sky in order to identify new and unusual objects. Scientists predict that tens of thousands of worlds currently unknown could be discovered.
These discoveries could include faint planets without a star around which to orbit, as well as small black holes moving through space. Astronomers also hope to obtain the first definitive evidence of exomoons, moons that orbit planets outside our solar system.
Roman will also pay special attention to dark energy. The universe has been expanding since the Big Bang, around 13.8 billion years ago, but observations show that this expansion accelerated about 6 billion years ago. Scientists have yet to determine the cause of this acceleration.
To study this phenomenon, the telescope will also use stellar explosions known as supernovae. Measuring cosmic distances through them will help scientists understand how the universe has expanded over time.
Another expected result is the creation of a three-dimensional map of dark matter. To achieve this, scientists will measure how gravity bends light as it travels across vast distances.
Although dark matter has not been seen directly, it is believed to account for about 85 percent of all matter in the universe and helps maintain the structure of stars and galaxies.
The telescope is also equipped with an experimental instrument, the coronagraph, which could be used to observe planets near very bright stars. A star’s intense light usually makes it difficult to distinguish the much fainter glow of a nearby planet.
The coronagraph will act as a kind of shield that blocks the star’s light, giving astronomers the opportunity to identify worlds that were previously too difficult to see. The instrument is designed to be 100 to 1,000 times more powerful than coronagraphs previously used on space telescopes.
If the technology works as expected, it could represent an important step toward the Habitable Worlds Observatory. The project is still in the concept phase and aims to photograph Earth-like planets and search their atmospheres for chemical signatures that could be linked to life.
NASA estimates that one of Roman’s most important contributions will be its ability to find objects that are not being searched for today, precisely because scientists do not yet know that they exist.
After being processed on Earth, the telescope’s data will be published so that astronomers around the world can use it for new studies.
For NASA, Roman is more than another space telescope. The observatory could change the way humanity observes the cosmos and raise new questions about the origin, structure and future of the universe.
