NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches to map dark matter and dark energy
The Roman Space Telescope has launched successfully and will survey the sky 1,000 times faster than Hubble from the L2 point.
After funding struggles and a name change, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has been successfully launched. It now begins a three-month, one-million-mile journey to its orbit at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2) beyond the Moon.
From that vantage point, Roman will carry out an unprecedented survey of the universe. Its field of view is 100 times larger than Hubble's and, according to NASA, it can survey the sky 1,000 times faster using its 300-megapixel infrared camera.
Exoplanets and the dark universe
Roman also carries a Coronagraph system that can block and mask glare from stars, allowing it to directly image exoplanets, including smaller, older and colder planets orbiting close to their stars.
The telescope will conduct detailed 3D scans to help map the distribution of dark matter and narrow down the candidates for what it is made of. Using those same 3D scans along with gravitational lensing measurements, Roman will attempt to map how dark energy shaped the evolution of the universe.
Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, said in a press release that "Roman will be a discovery machine that will bring us closer than ever before to answering humanity's most profound questions about our cosmic history."
More details are available in The Verge's report.
