'A giant leap forward': Nasa launches powerful new space telescope to explore mysteries of the Universe
The US space agency's telescope is starting a multi-year mission to create a new map of the universe and learn more about dark energy and dark matter.
Nasa has launched a powerful new space telescope, dubbed a "giant leap forward," to delve into the Universe's mysteries. The next-generation telescope lifted off from its Florida launchpad, tasked with exploring dark energy, black holes, and other cosmic enigmas.
Named the Nancy Grace Roman telescope, it is designed to capture expansive panoramic views of space, boasting a field of vision 100 times broader than both the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, according to Nasa.
The mission commences with a 100-day journey to a vantage point approximately one million miles from Earth. From there, the telescope will begin mapping exoplanets, which are planets located outside our solar system.
Nicky Fox, a Nasa administrator, stated, "Roman is going to change the way we look at the Universe." She added, "It is going to discover tens of thousands, maybe even 100,000 new exoplanets."
US President Donald Trump joined Nasa's news conference on Sunday morning via phone to commend the scientists involved in the project. "You're the hottest in space, and we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. So, let's keep it all going. You're a big part of it," Trump remarked.
The successful launch occurred on Sunday morning local time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Jackie Townsend, a project manager for Nasa's Roman telescope, expressed her enthusiasm at the news conference following liftoff, saying, "What a glorious dawn launch. The ride was magnificent. It put us right where we wanted to be."
Approximately 30 minutes after launch, Roman detached from its SpaceX rocket and is now en route to its orbiting point, roughly a million miles away.
Astronomer Jenifer Millard explained that the telescope will be four times further from Earth than the Moon, a region where many infrared space cameras, designed to detect what she calls "heat light," operate. She informed the BBC that this distance is crucial to prevent infrared light from the Moon and Earth from interfering with the cameras.
Nasa's James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, also orbits the Sun about one million miles from Earth, but its field of vision is less extensive. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched by Nasa in 1990, orbits at approximately 300 miles above Earth's surface.
While Roman will primarily observe the distant Universe, Millard noted that scientists also anticipate it will uncover thousands of new worlds within our own galaxy.
The telescope is named in honor of physicist Nancy Grace Roman, who served as Nasa's first chief astronomer in the 1960s and its first female executive. During her career, she played a pivotal role in securing US Congress's approval for the Hubble Space Telescope and later identified dark energy as its most intriguing discovery.
The new telescope is similarly expected to revolutionize our understanding of the Universe, particularly through its investigation of dark energy. It has a primary lifespan of five years, with an objective to operate for 10 years.
Nasa states that Roman's "crisp, sweeping surveys will help scientists investigate dark energy and dark matter, discover and characterise exoplanets, map billions of galaxies, study black holes, and explore objects from our own solar system to the edge of the observable Universe."
Dark matter, which is invisible, functions as a gravitational adhesive, while dark energy is believed to be a repulsive force driving the Universe's expansion. Together, they are thought to constitute about 95% of the Universe.
"One of our main goals at Nasa is answering the question: are we alone in the Universe?" Fox stated at a Sunday morning news conference. "With Roman, we are going to make this giant leap forward... that is going to allow us to look at these distant, distant worlds and start to really resolve the atmosphere around them to let us know: could they be habitable?"
Millard explained that through the work of telescopes like Roman, scientists aim to create "enormous cosmic maps" of the Universe at various stages. "They'll be almost like an onion, so you can peel back layer upon layer... and see how the distribution of galaxies changes through cosmic time," she said. "What we want to do is use this distribution to try and figure out dark matter and dark energy because we know they exist, we see their effects, but what they are is a real mystery."