Share to ClassroomNASA Sends New Roman Space Telescope
NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is ready to launch a new space telescope. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope cost $4.3billion. The launch is planned for 30 August from Florida, on a SpaceX rocket. The telescope is named after Nancy Grace Roman. She was the first chief astronomer at NASA. People called her the mother of Hubble.
The telescope has a strange history. About fifteen years ago, an American spy agency offered NASA a satellite it was not using. The idea was simple: point it up at the stars instead of down at Earth. Engineers turned the satellite into a science tool. Roman sees as clearly as the Hubble Space Telescope. But it can watch a much wider part of the sky. Scientist Julie McEnery says Roman can map our galaxy in one month. Hubble would need about a hundred years.
Scientists hope Roman will help them understand dark energy. Dark energy is the force that pushes the universe apart. The telescope will also map billions of galaxies and look for new planets. To find them, Roman will watch how a star's gravity bends the light of a star behind it. Albert Einstein described this idea in 1936, but thought it would never work. The mission should last five years, and all the data will be free.
