NASA's Roman Space Telescope: A Hubble Successor Set to Launch
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named after the agency's first chief astronomer, is scheduled to launch on August 30, 2026. With a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble's, it will survey a billion galaxies to investigate dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets, and directly image exoplanets and planet-forming disks.
Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, the ‘mother of the Hubble Space Telescope,’ the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble's, potentially measuring light from a billion galaxies in its lifetime.
- Reason077
Roman is scheduled to launch tomorrow (Aug 30) on a Falcon Heavy rocket:
https://www.space.com/news/live/nancy-grace-roman-telescope-...
- marze
For some tasks, surveys in particular, field of view is critical. You would need many Hubble telescopes to do what Roman can do mapping everything out there.
"What really makes Roman stand out is that it is designed for wide-field imaging. The cameras on telescopes can often only detect objects in a very small patch of sky. If we use the size that the full moon appears in the sky as our guide, Hubble’s field of view is often smaller than that —meaning each picture it takes is of a patch of sky smaller than the full moon. Webb’s instruments often are even smaller than Hubble’s. Each picture taken by Roman, however, will be larger than the full moon, allowing it to survey more of the sky much faster than Hubble or Webb."
https://science.psu.edu/news/ask-expert-will-roman-help-reve...
- willis936
Part of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable to the fact that this is a retrofit of an obsolete spy satellite. The leftovers of the security sector will be the most advanced scientific space surveyor. I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities.
- dylan604
I'm really excited about observations we're about to see over the next decade. Bringing NGR online and combining with Rubin, Hubble, and JWST will give us imagery and hopefully new discoveries and understanding.
I had the fortune of letting some of my neighbors through a telescope for the first time for the partial lunar eclipse. I say fortune, because it is amazing to be a part of someone having that experience that never disappoints. Even if they've seen images from NASA/ESA, putting your eyeball directly to the 'scope is much more meaningful.
- stuart78
This video linked from the site is quite good at adding a sense of scale to the undertaking. I also love that Roman will be supported by Hubble and Webb.