National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Launches USD 4.3 Billion ‘Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’ to Explore Universe’s Biggest Mysteries

Key facts

• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched its USD 4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
• The telescope is headed to a point in space roughly 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometres) from Earth, the same region where NASA's James Webb Space Telescope operates.
• Roman's field of view is more than 100 times wider than Hubble's.
• One month of Roman observations of the Milky Way would take the Hubble Space Telescope about a century to complete.
• Roman will hunt for exoplanets and carry an experimental coronagraph designed to block starlight so that fainter orbiting planets can be seen directly.
• The telescope will create a vast catalogue of galaxies and cosmic objects to help study dark energy and the expansion of the universe.
• Roman's primary mirror is about 8 feet (2.4 metres) across and was donated to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office from surplus spy satellite mirrors.
• Roman is NASA's first space telescope named after a woman, honouring Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer.
• The telescope launched nearly a year ahead of schedule and within budget.