NASA unveils panoramic Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
FILE - NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope stands fully assembled, following the integration of its two major segments, in the clean room at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The mission is slated to launch by May
NASA unveiled its latest space telescope on Tuesday.
Dig deeper:
Dubbed the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, this newest piece of cutting-edge space technology will "have a deep, panoramic view of the cosmos, generating never-before-seen pictures" of our universe.
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
The backstory:
The telescope is named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, Nancy Grace Roman, the agency said.
Big picture view:
The Roman Space Telescope’s mission is to get expansive field views of thousands of planetary bodies in the Milky Way, as well as smaller celestial bodies in our own solar system, according to the Space Telescope Science Institute.
What they're saying:
"Roman will provide a panoramic field of view that is 200 times greater than Hubble's infrared view, leading to the first wide-field maps of the universe at space-based resolution. Roman will combine the power of imaging and spectroscopy in synergy with other observatories to gain fresh insights into the universe through focused surveys and General Astrophysics observations," STSCI said.
Gathering such data will help scientists address many topics such as planetary science, stellar populations, galaxy evolution and cosmology.
The images that will eventually be captured by the Roman telescope will hopefully help scientists better understand the mysteries surrounding dark energy, dark matter and observe exoplanets.
What's next:
It will be shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of its launch, which is planned for early fall.
The Source: Information for this article was taken from the NASA website and the Space Telescope Science Institute website. This story was reported from San Jose.