Dark matter and dark energy make up 95% of the universe. Humanity has never discovered either directly. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named after NASA’s first chief of astronomy and the first woman to hold a leadership position at the agency, recently reached a milestone: it is completed.
At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, scientists and engineers gathered to celebrate the observatory’s completion, as cleanroom lighting showed off the observatory’s beauty ahead of the upcoming mission.
NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
Roman’s primary mirror is also similar in size to Hubble’s, with a diameter of about 2.5 meters. However, the differences between the two objects appear when the second identical feature is considered. As explained by Jared Isaacman, the head of NASA, the period it takes for Hubble to image an object can be done within a year by Roman, which means that the latter works 1000 times faster compared to Hubble and at the same time has 200 times wider pictures of the sky.
Hubble has been operational since 1990 and has collected approximately 400 terabytes of scientific data during its 35-year existence. Roman, on the other hand, is estimated to generate 500 terabytes of scientific data per year after it becomes operational.
Roman’s Wide Field Instrument is a 300-megapixel visible-to-near-infrared camera equipped with a slitless spectrometer with image sizes 50 times larger than those of the James Webb Space Telescope. This is necessary because the instrument uses the wide coverage space to accomplish its mission of monitoring the sky and detecting fast celestial events that would go unnoticed by smaller telescopes.
That includes fast radio bursts, neutron star collisions and supernovae. According to Space.com, program scientist for the Roman Telescope Dominic Benford said, “We’re going to see thousands of supernovae, and some of them will be further away than any supernova we’ve ever seen before.” “We will trace the history of the universe through exploding stars.”
The wide-field approach allows Roman to create detailed three-dimensional maps of the distribution of galaxies, which scientists use as a primary tool to investigate how dark matter affects the structure of the universe.
Dark matter and dark energy, which exist in the universe, represent the most fundamental elements of existence, as they make up 95% of all matter and energy in the universe. The scientists did not see either phenomenon through direct observation. Scientists use dark matter to explain how galaxies maintain their structure despite violating established laws of nature, and they use dark energy to explain the increasing rate of expansion of the universe.
Roman’s wide view of the sky gives him a practical advantage in this hunt. By quickly imaging large numbers of galaxies, it can track how these galaxies cluster and how the cosmic expansion has shifted over time, the two observational handles scientists have about the dark universe.
“We will study how the universe itself has expanded over time,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist. “These are the keys to unlocking the fundamental nature of dark matter, dark energy and the structure of the universe itself.”
Roman is expected to be launched into space using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy vehicle that has completed eleven successful missions to date. Roman will head to Lagrange Point 2, about a million kilometers away from the planet, in orbit with the James Webb Space Telescope, where it will remain cool by sunlight while in constant communication with mission control.
Until then, however, Roman would have to undergo further testing and be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Once these steps are completed, Roman will carry with him a coronagraph capable of imaging planets 100 million times fainter than their host stars, a power 100 to 1,000 times greater than any existing space coronagraph, and a tool that could produce the first direct images of Jupiter-like worlds orbiting distant suns.
Roman’s most important discoveries, McEnery suggested, may not yet have names. “The most exciting science from Roman will be the things we didn’t expect, that we couldn’t predict.”
