Roman, NASA’s Next Generation of Telescopes Will Reveal Dark Galaxies

Roman will study galaxies and dark matter using his field of view.

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — This year, the federal government has budgeted $500 million for the American Space Agency (NASA) to work on the next generation of space telescopes. Congress revealed details of the space agency’s 2022 budget on Tuesday, but is awaiting ratification later this month.

NASA received a total of more than 24 billion US dollars, less than the initial submission of 24.8 billion US dollars. NASA currently has significant goals, including the Artemis mission which aims to return humans to the moon in the next few years.

One of the budgets is allocated for the Space Telescope Nancy Grace Roman NASA’s forthcoming and will launch no later than May 2027. The Roman Space Telescope will be a next-generation observatory with a field of view 200 times wider than Hubble’s, intended to look across the universe. This means the telescope will be able to build vast panoramas of outer space that Hubble took hundreds of years to complete.

NASA hopes that Roman will reveal a large number of rocky worlds orbiting around the star, far away where liquid water might exist. The light detector will be so sensitive that each photon of light will be counted by the telescope.

According to NASA, no other observatory has performed imaging of this level in visible light before. This observatory will be an important step in finding habitable planets.

In addition, the telescope can explain the great mystery of dark energy and dark matter, which are the mysterious and unexplained properties of the universe that have puzzled scientists until recently.

Roman will study the galaxy and dark matter used its wide field of view to see how massive cosmic structures formed. It is possible that investigating dark energy will reveal why the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

In September 2021, Roman passed a major design review indicating that design and development work had been completed. Currently, the Roman team at NASA is in the process of development and testing.

NASA’s latest groundbreaking space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, launched less than three months ago. James Webb is currently preparing for his first scientific observations later this year.

This year, NASA budgeted $174.5 million for James Webb’s operations, which is far less than the money put into Roman’s construction. Nonetheless, NASA predicts that Roman will be cheaper than James Webb overall.

According to the budget, NASA plans to use the $3.5 billion development cost cap for Roman. While James Webb will cost about 10 billion US dollars. However, the price of Roman is likely to rise in the coming years.

The telescope was originally known as the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), but in 2020 its name was changed to honor Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer and “mother” of the Hubble Space Telescope. This was done because in 2018 Nancy Grace Roman died.

–