The newly named Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, or Roman Space Telescope for short,
Considered the "mother" of the Hubble Space TelescopeLaunched 30 years ago by NASA, Nancy Grace Roman has tirelessly advocated for new instruments that would allow scientists to study the wider universe right from space. She left a huge legacy in the scientific community when she died in 2018.
It is because of Nancy's leadership and visionGrace Roman NASA became a pioneer in the field of astrophysics and launched Hubble, the most powerful and productive space telescope in the world. I can't think of a better name for WFIRST, which will be the successor to NASA's Hubble and Webb telescopes.
Jim Bridenstine, NASA Administrator
Former Senator Barbara Mikulski, whoShe worked with NASA on the Hubble Space Telescopes and WFIRST, and emphasized the appropriateness of naming her new WFIRST telescope in honor of Dr. Nancy Roman, Hubble's "mother", during the celebration of the 100th anniversary of US women's suffrage.
The Roman Space Telescope will become an observatoryNASA, designed to address important questions in the fields of dark energy, exoplanets and infrared astrophysics. The telescope has a primary mirror 2.4 meters in diameter and the same dimensions as Hubble's primary mirror. Roman has two instruments: a wide-field instrument and a technology demonstration instrument, the Coronagraph. A coronagraph is a telescope that allows you to observe the solar corona outside of eclipses. It is known that the solar corona radiates much weaker than the disk of the Sun, so it can be seen with the naked eye only during a total solar eclipse, when the disk of the Moon covers the disk of the Sun.
The large format instrument will have a fieldvision, which is 100 times larger than Hubble's infrared instrument, allowing it to capture more of the sky with less observation time. The Coronagraph instrument will perform high-contrast imaging and spectroscopy of selected neighboring exoplanets.
One of the areas of science that will benefit fromthe extensive mission data is microlensing research. Gravitational lensing is an observational effect that arises from the fact that the presence of mass deforms the fabric of space-time. The effect is especially visible around very massive objects such as black holes and entire galaxies. But even relatively small objects like stars and planets cause a noticeable degree of curvature called microlensing.
The Roman Microlensing Review will also findhundreds of other strange and interesting space objects. The novel discovers starless planets that roam the galaxy like outcasts; brown dwarfs that are too massive to be classified as planets but not massive enough to ignite like stars; neutron stars and black holes.
Microlensing events are extremely rare and requireextensive observations. The novel will observe hundreds of millions of stars every 15 minutes for months in a row, which no other space telescope can do, creating an unprecedented stream of new information.
In February, the WFIRST project passed an important programand a technical milestone by providing the mission with an official green light to begin hardware development and testing. With the passage of this final milestone, the team will begin finalizing the mission design by creating engineering test blocks and models to ensure the project will withstand extreme conditions during launch and in space.
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