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.
It’ll be able to image actual planets and do a spectral analysis to determine its composition. So cool
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 This was an outdated spy satellite design that originally would have been pointed at Earth.
I wonder if we’ll finally discover intelligent life on Earth
Well unlike the probably dozen or so nearly identical telescope already in space, this one will actually be pointed up.
It kills me how there’s always money to spend on “defence”, but the moment you want to point one of those sit satellites up… well that’s not in the budget.
Don’t get your hopes up
Using gravitational microlensing to find exoplanets is amazing. I had no idea we had technology sensitive enough for that. That should unlock way more planets, because they won’t have to be aligned so precisely in their orbits relative to us.
