Nasa launches new space telescope able to see 100 times more than Hubble

What the report says

Nasa has launched its Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Florida on a planned multi-year mission to map the universe and probe some of astronomy’s biggest unknowns, according to BBC World News. The spacecraft lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on Sunday morning local time aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and separated from the vehicle about 30 minutes later.

The telescope is expected to reach an orbit about one million miles from Earth after a roughly 100-day trip. From that vantage point, Nasa says Roman will produce panoramic views with a field of vision far wider than Hubble’s or the James Webb Space Telescope’s. The mission is designed to study dark energy and dark matter, search for and characterize exoplanets, and observe black holes and distant galaxies.

BBC World News reported that the instrument is named after Nancy Grace Roman, Nasa’s first chief astronomer and a key figure in the development of Hubble. Officials said the project could transform knowledge of the universe and improve scientists’ ability to examine whether distant worlds might be habitable. The telescope has a five-year primary mission, with a goal of lasting up to 10 years.

The launch also comes amid broader scientific interest in how the universe is structured and how it has expanded over time. Background astronomy context: dark matter and dark energy remain largely unexplained, though they are thought to account for most of the cosmos.