NASA launches first telescope named after female scientist

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named after NASA's first Chief of Astronomy, has been launched into space. The telescope was carried aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket operated by SpaceX from Cape Canaveral, Florida. According to Deutsche Welle Science and DW News, it is expected to reach its destination, approximately 1.6 million kilometers from Earth, in about one month's time.

The telescope will be used to investigate a wide range of cosmic phenomena, including black holes, exoplanets, and exploding stars. As Deutsche Welle Science and DW News reported, astronomers expect it to find thousands of supernovae, tens of thousands of planets, billions of galaxies, and tens of billions of stars. The mission has a total budget of more than $4 billion, and the first images are expected back on Earth in early 2027.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is designed to survey the sky far more quickly than the Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched in 1990 and is now operating with reduced capabilities. As the BBC Science reported, Roman's field of vision is at least 100 times larger than Hubble's. According to Phys.org, the telescope will take more than three months to reach its destination, and NASA science mission director Nicky Fox said it "is going to be able to do things that we've never been able to do before with its massive field of view."

Brief written by urgent.news from DW English (Top Stories), Deutsche Welle Science, DW News, BBC Science, Phys.org — 5 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.