Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

168 points - yesterday at 3:48 PM

Comments

delichon yesterday at 11:54 PM

The data, up to 1.4TB/day raw compressed, is planned to be fully open, every observation is public as soon as it is processed with no embargo. You can just download it and start looking for Rama or Oumuamua or plan your exoplanetary real estate empire or make a really big sandbox game. I at least want somebody to make me a cool screen saver.

You could easily be the first person to see a galaxy.

I wonder how much space exploration could be financed by auctioning off naming rights.

marze yesterday at 4:48 PM

For some tasks, surveys in particular, field of view is critical. You would need many Hubble telescopes to do what Roman can do mapping everything out there.

"What really makes Roman stand out is that it is designed for wide-field imaging. The cameras on telescopes can often only detect objects in a very small patch of sky. If we use the size that the full moon appears in the sky as our guide, Hubble’s field of view is often smaller than that —meaning each picture it takes is of a patch of sky smaller than the full moon. Webb’s instruments often are even smaller than Hubble’s. Each picture taken by Roman, however, will be larger than the full moon, allowing it to survey more of the sky much faster than Hubble or Webb."

https://science.psu.edu/news/ask-expert-will-roman-help-reve...

Reason077 yesterday at 4:53 PM

Roman is scheduled to launch tomorrow (Aug 30) on a Falcon Heavy rocket:

https://www.space.com/news/live/nancy-grace-roman-telescope-...

willis936 yesterday at 5:42 PM

Part of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable to the fact that this is a retrofit of an obsolete spy satellite. The leftovers of the security sector will be the most advanced scientific space surveyor. I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities.

nightsd01 today at 2:01 AM

I will never understand why NASA doesn't build at least two copies of expensive space telescopes like this. One single launch failure and boom (literally), the entire project is a failure?

It wouldn't double the cost assuming they do it with even a modicum of efficiency and intelligence. And hey - assuming that the launch goes smoothly, you can get double the benefit

dylan604 yesterday at 7:58 PM

I'm really excited about observations we're about to see over the next decade. Bringing NGR online and combining with Rubin, Hubble, and JWST will give us imagery and hopefully new discoveries and understanding.

I had the fortune of letting some of my neighbors through a telescope for the first time for the partial lunar eclipse. I say fortune, because it is amazing to be a part of someone having that experience that never disappoints. Even if they've seen images from NASA/ESA, putting your eyeball directly to the 'scope is much more meaningful.

deleted today at 4:17 AM

deleted yesterday at 5:04 PM

stuart78 yesterday at 6:02 PM

This video linked from the site is quite good at adding a sense of scale to the undertaking. I also love that Roman will be supported by Hubble and Webb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDwemQH2zDU

danilor yesterday at 6:41 PM

I'm wondering what are the considerations for having multiple detectors instead of a single large one! Does anybody have an idea? is it just because it's easier?

jibal yesterday at 10:53 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman

P.S. I didn't post this at top level ... it was in response to a silly joke about the Romans which has since been flagged by dang ... apparently my comment was relocated to the top level but it's redundant here as this link was already given in the post (which I didn't see when I made this comment.)

BoredomIsFun yesterday at 5:00 PM

Thankfully, it is not Nancy Ann Grace.

Mistletoe yesterday at 6:26 PM

I was scared for a second that the current clown administration had named a space telescope after Nancy Grace the tv personality.

ck2 yesterday at 4:51 PM

I'm still holding my breath on this one, will be most amazing telescope in my lifetime

parked in L2 a million miles away with 500mbps data transfer rate (1.5TB per DAY)

we've made it past DOGE destroying it

we've made it past him renaming it after himself and putting his mugshot on it

but Musk still needs to send it out of orbit without explosions, so here's hoping

(Falcon Heavy, don't tell me the odds)

* https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/6983/

* JWST vs Roman comparison https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14942/

* https://www.wired.com/story/nasas-nancy-grace-roman-space-te...

* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-roman-space...

* https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5905370/nasa-nancy-grac...

did not know and it's horrific Roman started as a billion dollar spy satellite sitting in a warehouse unused, but okay we got the crumbs from $20 Trillion in military spending I guess

oh and while the smallest planet Roman can image will be Jupiter-sized, Roman's successor would be able to image earth-like planets

except The Habitale Worlds Observatory Space Telescope HWO was scheduled for 2040 and now will not happen in my lifetime because DOGE got that one, Congress awarded it $150 Million and DOGE changed it to $5 Million

* https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/programs/habitable-wor...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitable_Worlds_Observatory

ReindeerFlotill today at 12:21 AM

[dead]

fortran77 yesterday at 11:05 PM

[flagged]

syngrog66 today at 2:35 AM

unfortunate name

ginko yesterday at 10:14 PM

[flagged]

creamedcorn today at 2:28 AM

That's great! The US is the best tech innovation country in the world with the best curiosity and the sharpest people. Everyone else just tries to copy.