Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
NASA’s newest space observatory, the USD 4.3 billion Roman Space Telescope, lifted off on Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, beginning a mission to search for planets beyond the solar system, study dark energy and dark matter, and map the universe on an unprecedented scale.
The bus-sized telescope, named after late NASA astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, is headed to an observation point about 1 million miles, or 1.6 million kilometres, away. The journey will take more than three months. From there, Roman will work alongside some of the world’s most advanced observatories to study hidden parts of the cosmos with exceptional speed and a much wider view than earlier space telescopes.
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Roman was launched shortly after daybreak from the Kennedy Space Centre on a Falcon Heavy rocket. NASA science mission director Nicky Fox said, “It’s going to find thousands of supernovae, tens of thousands of planets, billions of galaxies and tens of billions of stars. It’s going to be able to do things that we’ve never been able to do before with its massive field of view.”
According to NASA, Roman’s field of view is more than 100 times wider than that of the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in orbit for 36 years. The James Webb Space Telescope, which is also stationed at the same distant observation point, has a much narrower but highly precise view that allows it to focus on objects dating back to near the Big Bang. NASA said Roman, Webb, the European Space Agency’s Euclid spacecraft and the National Science Foundation’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will together help answer some of the biggest questions about the universe.
Scientists said Roman’s discoveries are expected to include countless galaxies and stars with planets. Once those worlds are identified, Webb can be used to study them more closely. Senior project scientist Julie McEnery said before launch, “Roman’s vast reach will allow us to find the weird, the rare and the unusual. We’ll redefine what it means to find a needle in a haystack.”
A major aim of the mission is to improve understanding of dark matter and dark energy, which make up most of the universe but cannot be directly seen. By building a large catalogue of galaxies, Roman is expected to help scientists measure how fast the universe is expanding under the influence of these unseen forces. McEnery said Roman’s key strength is speed, noting that a month of Milky Way observations by Roman would take Hubble a century to complete. She said Roman should also provide the deepest view yet into the crowded central region of the Milky Way.
The telescope carries a wide-field infrared camera with Hubble-like sensitivity but is said to be 1,000 times faster. It also has a coronagraph, an instrument designed to block starlight so that planets orbiting a star can be directly imaged, even if they are faint. Roman has also been designed to be refuelled, which could extend its life if a robotic refuelling mission becomes available in the next decade.
NASA said Roman was launched nearly a year ahead of schedule and within budget, and it is the agency’s first space telescope to be named after a woman. Retired NASA scientist Ed Weiler, who said he coined the phrase “Mother of Hubble” for Roman, called the tribute overdue. Roman joined NASA in 1959 and argued that observatories above Earth’s atmosphere could see farther and better. She died in 2018 at the age of 93. “This is very, very fitting. I think Nancy would be very proud,” Weiler said, referring to the telescope’s mission to tackle major unanswered questions including dark energy.
Hubble, launched in 1990, began its mission with a flawed mirror that later had to be fixed by astronauts during spacewalks. Roman’s primary mirror is the same size as Hubble’s, nearly 8 feet or 2.4 metres across, and came from surplus hardware originally built for a US spy satellite programme. The National Reconnaissance Office gave NASA two unused mirrors more than a decade ago for reuse, while the second remains in storage. With its broad view, speed and specialised instruments, Roman is expected to become a major new tool in the effort to study planets, galaxies and the hidden forces shaping the universe.
With PTI Inputs
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
