NASA's next large space telescope passes important milestone

NASA has mounted the most important parts of the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope on the spacecraft that will take the observatory into space and to its research site. The work on the next large space telescope thus remains on schedule so that a launch can take place in May 2027 at the latest, NASA announced. The next step is to carry out extensive tests to check, among other things, whether all the significant parts work as they should with the spacecraft. In addition, the solar panels for the power supply will then be installed.

Great expectations

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (NGRST) is an infrared telescope that was originally developed under the name Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). It was renamed in 2020 and has since borne the name of the US astronomer and first NASA astronomy officer, Nancy Grace Roman. Because of her significant role in the development of the Hubble Space Telescope, she is known as the "Mother of Hubble". Once launched, the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope will complement the already active James Webb Space Telescope.

What can be expected from the next large space telescope has already been researched in simulations for years. The device will have a field of view that is at least one hundred times larger than that of the Hubble Space Telescope. As part of its mission, it will examine the light of a billion galaxies. It will also directly image exoplanets and planet-forming dust disks and carry out a "census" of the planetary systems in our Milky Way. In addition, a research group has determined that the instrument should also find dozens of solitary exoplanets with the mass of our Earth that do not orbit a star and drift alone through the Milky Way.

(mho)