NASA’s new telescope to collect data on more than 2 billion galaxies

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled for launch on August 30, will allow the agency to collect data on more than 2 billion galaxies, project scientist Julie McEnery said.

According to her, the telescope’s primary sky survey will take more than a year and enable scientists to study the evolution of stars, galaxies and galaxy clusters, as well as track how the rate of the universe’s expansion has changed over time.

Nancy Grace Roman will cover an area of the sky roughly 100 times larger in a single observation than the Hubble Space Telescope. In addition, its high operating speed will allow it to survey the sky about 1,000 times faster than Hubble. A survey that would take Hubble a month to complete could be carried out by Roman much more quickly.

Scientists expect the telescope to survey the Milky Way during a single month of observations and detect up to 20 billion stars. The resulting data could form the largest catalog of astronomical objects ever compiled.

One of the mission’s main objectives will be to study dark energy and dark matter, as well as the processes behind the formation and evolution of galaxies. The telescope will also search for exoplanets and other previously unknown cosmic objects.

The observatory was named after American astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, who is known as the “mother of Hubble.”

The telescope is scheduled to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its primary scientific mission is planned to last five years, although NASA expects to extend it for another five years.

By Jeyhun Aghazada