NASA launches ‘discovery machine’ to unravel the invisible universe

NASA’s new observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, has lifted off to solve the universe’s enduring mysteries.

(CNN) — A massive observatory that scientists have called a “discovery machine” has launched toward the cosmos, beginning a journey that could mark a significant shift in our understanding of the universe.

Designed to seek out otherwise invisible and faint space objects, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at 7:26 a.m. ET Sunday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The observatory reached orbit about 10 minutes later.

Over the next five years, the bus-size telescope’s observations could reveal answers to enduring mysteries such as dark energy, which fuels the inexplicable accelerating expansion of the universe, and dark matter, which provides the cosmos with structure but remains unseen. It could allow astronomers to spot previously unseen galaxies and exoplanets, worlds around stars beyond our solar system, as well rogue planets that don’t orbit stars at all.

“Roman will give the Earth a new atlas of the universe,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said as the space agency unveiled the completed telescope on April 21 at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

With surveying capabilities more than 1,000 times faster than the Hubble Space Telescope, Roman will capture fundamentally different scientific observations that can’t be done with either Hubble or the James Webb Space Telescope.

“Together, the three missions will complement each other, giving us a more complete picture of the cosmos and advancing our understanding of the universe,” said Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Roman will take around three months to reach its ultimate orbital position of about 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) away from Earth, known as Lagrange Point 2, or L2. The James Webb Space Telescope is also parked in this orbit, where spacecraft are balanced by the gravitational pull of Earth and the sun. L2 is about four times farther from Earth than the moon, according to NASA.

In the meantime, the observatory will go through commissioning — testing out its instruments in space and deploying the antenna that will relay Roman’s massive imagery back to Earth.

The telescope is expected to transmit one terabyte of data per day — like streaming 1 million songs from 1 million miles away down to Earth, said Jeremy Perkins, Roman telescope integration and test scientist at Goddard.

The estimated $4.3 billion telescope has been in development for about a decade and became a priority for the scientific community about 16 years ago. Scientists around the world are anticipating the unprecedented insights Roman could deliver.

“When you develop a tool that is radically different from anything you’ve had before, you will discover things that you didn’t know were out there,” said Dominic Benford, Roman program scientist at NASA who has been involved with projects related to the concept for more than 20 years.

“Part of what Roman is for as a discovery machine is to give people a way to ask the universe questions that we have yet to conceive.”

What makes Roman different

NASA’s space telescopes have long explored life-altering questions, and in many ways, those capabilities are thanks to the observatory’s namesake, the “brilliant astronomer” Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, said Dr. Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA.

Roman was NASA’s first chief of astronomy in the 1960s and pioneered the idea of space-based astronomy observations, recognizing the power of lofting telescopes above Earth’s obscuring atmosphere. She became known as the “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.”

“Although she’s often most associated with those first space telescopes, it’s really our full fleet that she deserves credit for,” Domagal-Goldman said. “Every time we build a new space telescope, we add capabilities we didn’t have before and that adds to her legacy. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is no exception.”

The Roman telescope’s first images are expected in January before it kicks off unprecedented surveys of the universe, powered by a field of view more than 100 times that of Hubble thanks to its wide field instrument.

Domagal-Goldman compared Roman’s capabilities to capturing an all-encompassing view of a forest as well as seeing sharp details of its trees, like leaves and birds, all at the same time.

“Of course, this isn’t a forest we’re talking about; it’s the known universe, and those birds and trees are supernova galaxies, planets and stars,” he said during an August 5 briefing.

Dr. Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist, calls the new telescope’s observations the largest census that scientists have ever been able to take of planets across the Milky Way galaxy.It could find tens of thousands of previously unknown worlds and reveal just how common solar systems such as ours are across the cosmos.

“We’re going to be surveying patches of the sky going back over and over and over again to find new things that go bump in the night,” McEnery said. “Roman’s vast reach will allow us to find the weird, the rare and the unusual. We’ll redefine what it means to find a needle in a haystack.”

Some of those needles may include incredibly dim free-floating objects such as rogue planets or even small, wandering black holes, Benford said. Roman could also provide the first definitive proof of exomoons, or moons orbiting exoplanets.

Probing cosmic mysteries

During its five-year mission, the telescope will enable the discovery of billions of galaxies, thousands of exploding stars called supernovas and tens of billions of stars, according to Fox.

Stellar explosions occur so quickly that they often elude the gaze of telescopes. But Roman has the panoramic vision to see several at once, McEnery said, and the supernovas could act as cosmic candles to help astronomers track a mysterious force — dark energy — and unlock the role it may play in accelerating the expansion rate of the universe.

In the 1920s, astronomers Georges Lemaître and Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe has been expanding since its birth 13.8 billion years ago. But research that began in the 1990s has shown that something sparked an acceleration of the universe’s expansion about 6 billion years ago, and the cause remains unknown.

To study dark energy, Roman will measure how gravity bends light across large cosmic distances — creating a 3D map of dark matter in the process.

Dark matter has never been detected, but it is believed to make up 85% of the total matter in the universe and help hold stars and galaxies in stable orbits. Roman will map the distribution of galaxies and galaxy clusters across the cosmos, looking for the signature gravitational effects of dark matter.

Unlocking the true nature of dark energy and dark matter could help astronomers understand what the universe is made of, how its expansion has changed over time, and if there is more to understanding gravity than meets the eye. Both dark matter and dark energy also play a role in the distribution and movement of objects, such as galaxies and stars, across the cosmos.

“Roman is designed to make the measurements that will determine whether there’s some sort of fundamental difference in the way the universe works compared to the way we think it works,” Benford said.

All of Roman’s data will be made publicly available as soon as it is processed on Earth, providing a treasure trove for scientists to mine for answers to a multitude of cosmic queries.

“Instead of having a telescope that astronomers have to choose to point at a certain object, we just map lots and lots of sky,” Benford said. “Anybody who’s interested in star-forming regions, dying stars or distant galaxies, they’re already there in the data somewhere.”

Enabling a search for life

Apart from its wide field instrument, Roman also carries a technology demonstration called a coronagraph, a proof of concept that’s like “doing magic with physics,” McEnery said.

Astronomers use coronagraphs to block blinding starlight to see finer details, such as planets that may be in orbit around stars other than our sun.

If we were able to see Earth and the sun from a great distance in space, the two objects would appear incredibly close together — and the sun’s blazingly bright light would overshadow Earth’s, Benford said.

Roman will be able to use its coronagraph like a shield against harsh starlight to spot planets that are otherwise difficult to see around other stars and identify them. The observatory will see the glow of a Jupiter-size or possibly a Saturn-size planet near another star, he added. The telescope may even be able to glimpse light reflecting off the tops of clouds on these planets.

Hubble and Webb both have coronagraphs, but Roman’s experimental instrument is 100 to 1,000 times better than any built before, said Bertrand Mennesson, Roman deputy project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Mennesson’s area of focus is on the coronagraph, and he has worked on the mission for 14 years.

“You send the coronagraph into space, and it’s set it and forget it,” Mennesson told CNN. “That’s what I call a passive system, and that’s the case with JWST and Hubble. Conversely, for Roman, it’s an active system.”

To correct for vibrations, fluctuations, thermal radiation or any other errors, Roman’s coronagraph has mirrors that change shape in real time to maintain absolute precision.

If the coronagraph performs as expected, it could pave the way for future observatories.

Think of Roman as being able to take a picture of a firefly next to a floodlight from the other side of the country, Domagal-Goldman said.

What’s even harder is taking the same picture, but without the firefly’s glow, and only the floodlight reflected off the firefly’s dark body.

“If we can do that second one, which Roman is a major stepping stone towards doing, we’ll be able to build our next flagship observatory, the Habitable Worlds Observatory,” he said.

Right now, that mission is just a concept. The Habitable Worlds Observatory would be the first designed to photograph Earth-like planets — and even search for chemical signs of life within the atmospheres of those planets.

“We’re not going to get there with Roman, but we’re going to get there because of Roman,” Benford said.

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