NASA’s ‘Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’ is set to launch into space today, Sunday, with the aim of unraveling the universe’s mysteries and creating a vast new map of the cosmos. It will be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Boasting a field of view more than 100 times greater than that of the Hubble Telescope, this state-of-the-art instrument will help decode some of physics’ greatest mysteries, such as dark matter and dark energy. France 24 reported this news.
The telescope is named after American astronomer Nancy Grace Roman. Developed over more than a decade at a cost exceeding $4 billion, this flagship telescope will be positioned in an orbit 1.5 million kilometers from Earth—a journey that will take approximately 100 days. Roman will operate in coordination with the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories. One of its primary objectives is to discover thousands of exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) and supernovae.
According to scientists, approximately 95 percent of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy, the origins of which remain unknown. Using its infrared vision, the Roman telescope will detect light from billions of years ago, capturing images of the universe’s distant past. The telescope will transmit about 1.3 terabytes of data daily, which will be made accessible to both scientists and the general public.
