Nancy Grace Roman Telescope launch!

By Dr. Becky

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What's next for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Telescope now that it has launched? It took off yesterday from Cape Canaveral in Florida on board a Space X Falcon Heavy Rocket, launching roughly 9 months ahead of schedule. So what will happen now? Well, the Roman telescope is heading to the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, about 1 million miles from Earth. Orbiting at this point means that it will have a view of most of the Universe and Earth won’t block much of its view. From there, there will be about 3 months of calibration until the real fun can begin…and if Roman follows anything like the Webb telescope we could end up with some sneak peak images before Christmas! Roman will be doing many surveys of the sky: think the Hubble Ultra Deep Field but for over 10% of the entire sky scanning our skies for the birth of supermassive black holes, thousands of exoplanets, and mapping dark matter AND dark energy in unmatched detail. Its primary mission is slated to last five years, but if all goes well