NASA Nears Completion of Roman Telescope to Hunt 100,000 Exoplanets and Probe Dark Energy
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Aug 29
NASA Nears Completion of Roman Telescope to Hunt 100,000 Exoplanets and Probe Dark Energy
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 29
Summary
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is nearly complete after environmental testing last year, moving the agency closer to a mission aimed at dark energy and wide-field sky surveys.
More than 100,000 exoplanets could be discovered by Roman, whose infrared observations are also designed to measure how fast the universe’s expansion has changed over billions of years.
A canceled spy satellite supplied the mission’s key mirror, giving Roman a much larger 8-foot-class light-collecting system than the 5-foot mirror planned for the earlier WFIRST concept.
That larger design helped broaden support beyond dark-energy researchers to exoplanet scientists, turning a once-dimming proposal into NASA’s next major space observatory.