How NASA turned a spy satellite into the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon launch to unravel the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter
In the 1990s, NASA set out to design its own Hubble Space Telescope, which revolutionized our understanding of galaxies and stars after its 1990 launch. Two decades later, in 2012, a team led by Alan Dressler found an unexpected opportunity to acquire a spy satellite for free. This satellite was not an astronomy telescope, but it was of equal capability.
Dressler faced many of these "Hubble clones" in a New York defense contractor's clean room, as NASA aimed to turn this spy satellite into the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) is now set to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket within weeks from Florida. Its primary mission is to unravel the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter, the enigmatic components of the universe that explain our existence. Roman will also discover more exoplanets outside our solar system than ever before and test a crucial technology that could potentially reveal life on such worlds. As NASA administrator Jared Isaacman stated, Roman is a telescope capable of "spectacular things."
The story of Roman's journey from a spy satellite to a groundbreaking space observatory is a tale of important science, unlikely interagency cooperation, and unusual efficiency. It was built to spy on America's adversaries during the post-9/11 world but was later given to NASA when the program collapsed. Roman's development proceeded under budget and ahead of schedule—a rare feat for complex astronomical observatories.
Not only did it have an unusual origin, but it has also evaded death on multiple occasions, making it a telescope that shouldn't exist yet.
Roman's ultimate mission is to cast its eye onto the heavens, but in a way, its mission is still rooted in its original purpose. By providing better observations of supernovae across the universe and measuring the shapes and positions of countless galaxies, Roman will study the cosmic structure dictated by dark matter. This mission is a continuation of the 2000s' efforts to understand the dark universe, which became one of the highest priorities in astrophysics.
Written by urgent.news from Scientific American's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
