NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches Aug. 30 and is probably the space-thing I’ve been most excited about since the deployment of the JWST. Build from a leftover reconnaissance telescope (like Hubble was), Roman is designed to make catalogs of large swaths of the sky, find new planets (including in very bright areas like the center of our own galaxy), and study supernovae and their remnants.


Here’s an example of the difference in area the Nancy Grace Roman telescope will be able to cover in a single capture versus Hubble, despite having a primary mirror the same size. Keep in mind, this is an unused National Reconnaissance Organization satellite. This was an outdated spy satellite design that originally would have been pointed at Earth.