NASA's new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is about to launch. Here's why it's so cool. - Yahoo

What the report says

Yahoo reported that NASA is preparing to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a major new observatory intended to complement Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope. The article says Roman is scheduled to lift off at 7:20 a.m. on Aug. 30 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, after more than a decade of development and reportedly nine months earlier than planned. NASA officials previewed the mission during a virtual briefing Wednesday.

According to Yahoo’s account of NASA’s briefing, Roman is designed to study the universe’s origins, composition and evolution, while helping scientists investigate questions involving dark energy, dark matter, black holes and planets beyond the solar system. Senior project scientist Julie McEnery said the telescope’s broad survey capability should repeatedly uncover extremely rare phenomena, giving researchers targets that other observatories can examine in greater detail.

The article explains that Roman will observe infrared light and operate near the second Lagrange point, the same distant region used by Webb. Its mirror is closer in size to Hubble’s than Webb’s, so its individual images will not match Webb’s detail. Its advantage is scale: Yahoo reports that Roman’s wide-field instrument has 18 sensors, a 300-megapixel camera and a view 100 times wider than Hubble’s, allowing it to survey the sky far faster.

Roman is named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first woman executive and a key figure in advancing Hubble, often called the “Mother of Hubble.” The mission matters because its large surveys could provide data for future discoveries and help test scientists’ current models of how the cosmos works.