Announcement:
WFIRST
has been renamed
to honor a NASA Pioneer
Introducing
the
Nancy Grace Roman
Space Telescope
More about Nancy Grace Roman and the new mission name.
Read the NASA Press Release.
The Roman Space Telescope is a NASA observatory designed to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics.
The Roman Space Telescope will have a panoramic field of view of the universe that is 100 times wider than the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Roman Space Telescope will delve into the mystery of dark energy by studying how the distribution of galaxies and dark matter has changed throughout cosmic history and by studying the observed brightness of Type Ia supernovae as a function of cosmic time.
The Roman Space Telescope will complete the statistical census of planetary systems in the galaxy by using microlensing, the universe’s own magnifying glass, to find thousands of exoplanets.
The Roman Space Telescope will use a technique called coronagraphy to block the glaring light of exoplanet host stars to directly see planets and planet-forming disks. The Coronagraph Instrument is an advanced technology demonstrator for future exoplanet missions.
In the News
Probing the Hubble Constant with NASA’s Roman Space Telescope
Jan. 7, 2020 - Disagreement between Hubble constant predictions and measurements suggest flaws in either our measuring techniques or our model of the universe. The Roman Space Telescope will help us figure out which.
About the Mission
The Roman Space Telescope is a NASA observatory designed to unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter, search for and image exoplanets, and explore many topics in infrared astrophysics.
- The Roman Space Telescope has a 2.4m telescope, the same size as Hubble’s, but with a view 100 times greater than Hubble’s.
- The Roman Space Telescope was the top-ranked large space mission in the 2010 Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
- The Roman Space Telescope is slated to launch in the mid-2020s.
- The Roman Space Telescope will have no proprietary data period and all observing time will be competed.
