NASA unveils Roman space telescope to map the cosmos and hunt tens of thousands of exoplanets

NASA on Tuesday pulled the curtain back on its next flagship observatory, the Roman space telescope, a mission built to map the cosmos at unprecedented scale, search for tens of thousands of exoplanets and probe the elusive forces of dark matter and dark energy.

“Roman will give Earth a new atlas of the universe,” NASA administrator Jared Isaacman told a news conference at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where the spacecraft went on display. The 12-meter (39-foot), silvery observatory with massive solar panels will be transported to Florida ahead of a launch aboard a SpaceX rocket planned for September at the earliest.

More than a decade in the making at a cost exceeding $4 billion, the mission honors astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, nicknamed the “Mother of Hubble” for her role in developing NASA’s landmark space telescope.

Thirty-six years after Hubble revolutionized astronomy, Roman is designed to answer the questions Hubble could not, sweeping across the sky with a field of view at least 100 times larger while operating about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth. The observatory is expected to downlink an immense flow of observations.

Roman will send 11 terabytes of data to Earth each day, said Mark Melton, a systems engineer at Goddard. “In the first year, we’ll have sent down more data than Hubble will have for its entire life,” he said. With its wide-angle optics, the telescope will conduct a census of the universe’s contents.

“Roman will discover tens of thousands of new planets outside our solar system. It will reveal billions of galaxies, thousands of supernovae and tens of billions of stars,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The data trove will help scientists pinpoint targets for follow-up by telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope.

Roman will also explore what cannot be seen directly: dark matter and dark energy, which are thought to make up about 95% of the universe. Dark matter is believed to act as the gravitational glue binding galaxies together, while dark energy drives the accelerating expansion of the cosmos.

Using its infrared vision to capture light emitted billions of years ago, Roman will effectively look back in time to investigate how these phenomena shaped cosmic structure.

Complementing Europe’s Euclid space telescope and the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, Roman will probe how dark matter structures itself over cosmic time and calculate how fast galaxies are moving away from us, said Darryl Seligman, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Michigan State University.

Scientists say the discoveries could reshape our understanding of the universe.

Julie McEnery, who led the Roman project, said the mission’s findings could be transformative, while Melton added, “If Roman wins a Nobel Prize at some point, it’s probably for something we haven’t even thought about or questioned yet.” The spacecraft’s next steps are logistical: shipment to Florida and final preparations for liftoff no earlier than September.

Once in space, Roman is expected to map vast regions of the universe, refine the hunt for exoplanets and deliver a torrent of data that will guide the next generation of astronomical research.