Roman telescopes data deluge will change who gets to do big astronomy

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will transmit roughly 1.4 terabytes of data daily, equivalent to filling an entire gaming system hard drive. Kristen McQuinn, who will oversee science operations at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, likens this data deluge to the shift from Blockbuster rentals to streaming services.

Roman will be the first telescope to push astronomy fully into the cloud, with a shared online workspace allowing researchers worldwide to access and analyze the data. The telescope's main camera, with Hubble-like sharpness and a field of view over 100 times larger than Hubble's, will enable Roman to scan the Milky Way for up to 20 billion stars in just a month.

Once Roman begins regular operations, it will send down thousands of new images daily, amassing a trove of data measured in tens of thousands of terabytes. This monumental shift in data dissemination could democratize astronomy research, making it possible for high school students in Kentucky, professors in Baltimore, and collaborators in India to inspect the same Roman field in real-time and collaborate on ideas.