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Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/6983/ https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/6983/
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5905370/nasa-nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope-dark-energy-supernova https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5905370/nasa-nancy-grac...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman
- marze 2mo agoFor some tasks, surveys in particular, field of view is critical. You would need many Hubble telescopes to do what Roman can do mapping everything out there. "What really makes Roman stand out is that it is designed for wide-field imaging. The cameras on telescopes can often only detect objects in a very small patch of sky. If we use the size that the full moon appears in the sky as our guide, Hubble’s field of view is often smaller than that —meaning each picture it takes is of a patch of sky smaller than the full moon. Webb’s instruments often are even smaller than Hubble’s. Each picture taken by Roman, however, will be larger than the full moon, allowing it to survey more of the sky much faster than Hubble or Webb." https://science.psu.edu/news/ask-expert-will-roman-help-reveal-long-kept-secrets-universe https://science.psu.edu/news/ask-expert-will-roman-help-reve...
- SoftTalker 2mo agoAnd yet the narrow-field Hubble produced this famous image https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/universe-uncovered/hubble-deep-fields/ https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/universe-unc... Those are galaxies. In a field of view "about 1/13th the diameter of the full Moon."
- drfloyd51 2mo agoYour point being? Hubble in certain circumstances can see narrow and far. If you express this as a cone, you can extrapolate a volume. It might be very useful to have something that can search wide and maybe not as far; nearer Earth dangers perhaps. Express that as a wider cone and extrapolate volume.
- mrkpdl 2mo agoI think their point is that it’s amazing.
- beezle 2mo agoThe Rubble and NGR have the same size mirror but they are constructed differently. The former is not sharp over the entire field of view, the latter is - that coupled with a much, much larger camera (nearly 300MP) lets it record images at least equal to to HST but over a very wide field of view. As to speed, it is not just the camera view that makes NGR faster but also physical factors such as not having to wait for earth to get out of the way.
- ck2 2mo agoI'm still holding my breath on this one, will be most amazing telescope in my lifetime parked in L2 a million miles away with 500mbps data transfer rate (1.5TB per DAY) we've made it past DOGE destroying it we've made it past him renaming it after himself and putting his mugshot on it but Musk still needs to send it out of orbit without explosions, so here's hoping (Falcon Heavy, don't tell me the odds) * https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/6983/ https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/6983/ * JWST vs Roman comparison https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14942/ https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14942/ * https://www.wired.com/story/nasas-nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope-coronagraph-leap/ https://www.wired.com/story/nasas-nancy-grace-roman-space-te... * https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-roman-space-telescope-could-find-alien-earths-but-not-like-you-think/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-roman-space... * https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5905370/nasa-nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope-dark-energy-supernova https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5905370/nasa-nancy-grac... did not know and it's horrific Roman started as a billion dollar spy satellite sitting in a warehouse unused, but okay we got the crumbs from $20 Trillion in military spending I guess oh and while the smallest planet Roman can image will be Jupiter-sized, Roman's successor would be able to image earth-like planets except The Habitale Worlds Observatory Space Telescope HWO was scheduled for 2040 and now will not happen in my lifetime because DOGE got that one, Congress awarded it $150 Million and DOGE changed it to $5 Million * https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/programs/habitable-worlds-observatory/ https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/programs/habitable-wor... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitable_Worlds_Observatory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitable_Worlds_Observatory
- ButlerianJihad 2mo agoIt is not 500mbps but 500Mbps. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/communications/#HGA https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/commu... "mbps" is a meaningless abbreviation. You need to consistently and correctly use capital letters when communicating technical terms. You cannot "e e cummings" your way into effective writing. 500 megabits per second works out to 5.4 terabytes per day. No idea where you get 1.5, unless you were thinking of 500Mb/hour! 60 × 60 × 24 × 500 × 1000000 ÷ 8
- 2mo ago
- Reason077 2mo agoRoman is scheduled to launch tomorrow (Aug 30) on a Falcon Heavy rocket: https://www.space.com/news/live/nancy-grace-roman-telescope-live-updates-nasa-readies-roman-for-launch-august-29-2026 https://www.space.com/news/live/nancy-grace-roman-telescope-...
- BoredomIsFun 2mo ago[flagged]
- y-curious 2mo agoThe telescope will be used to film sensationalist TV about missing kids
- hyperhello 2mo agoIt watches the stars for evidence of guilt.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- willis936 2mo agoPart of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable to the fact that this is a retrofit of an obsolete spy satellite. The leftovers of the security sector will be the most advanced scientific space surveyor. I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities.
- ChocolateGod 2mo agoIIRC the mirror is from a spy satellite, but the chassis and electronics are all NASA.
- mturmon 2mo agoThis is true. The telescope is much more than just the primary mirror. Roman has two science instruments, a wide-field imager (“WFI”) and a coronagraph (“CGI”) and they were both built by NASA for this purpose (optics, electronics, detectors, deformable mirrors). The WFI optics includes filters and a prism and grism for spectroscopy, and of course the very large CCD arrays. The coronagraph is a rather special tech demo and allows imaging of exoplanets (Jupiter-like) while blocking the light of the host star. (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/coronagraph/ https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/coron...). It’s a precursor to HWO which is mentioned down-thread.
- m4rtink 2mo agoBTW, any idea what happened to the second mirror? IIRC NASA got 2 initially.
- willis936 2mo agoFrom what I can gather it is much more than just the primary mirror but the entire platform sans classified parts, which were replaced with NASA's optics and sensors.
- dfxm12 2mo agoPeople shouldn't be shocked that employees of the US government can deliver things ahead of schedule and under budget. The problems are that anyone gave Musk/doge the time of day and that we're too used to the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors.
- stuart78 2mo agoThis video linked from the site is quite good at adding a sense of scale to the undertaking. I also love that Roman will be supported by Hubble and Webb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDwemQH2zDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDwemQH2zDU
- Mistletoe 2mo ago[flagged]
- macintux 2mo agoI suppose we should be grateful he didn’t force his own name at the last minute. I suppose he still has time.
- lokibumdo 2mo ago[flagged]
- gjm11 2mo agoVery unlike Obamacare, which so far as I can make out was mostly a name given to the thing by its (and Obama's) opponents.
- Jtsummers 2mo agoIs this a joke or just a demonstration of ignorance? The name Obamacare was not given to it by Obama, but by opponents of the law. The Obama administration just leaned into it. Blame conservatives if the name bothers you, not Obama and his administration from the time.
- lokibumdo 2mo agoWrong. Obama himself uses that name https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/obama-i-like-the-name-obamacare/2012/09/02/869180aa-f543-11e1-86a5-1f5431d87dfd_video.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/obama-i-like-t...
- Jtsummers 2mo agoReread my comment. I said he leaned into it. If you are unfamiliar with that phrase it means (in this context) that he accepted and adopted the term, but he did not coin it. Which was your original, false, claim.
- danilor 2mo agoI'm wondering what are the considerations for having multiple detectors instead of a single large one! Does anybody have an idea? is it just because it's easier?
- Starman_Jones 2mo agoThe primary detector is the wide-field instrument, which, believe it or not, takes pictures with a wide field of view. The secondary detector is the coronagraph instrument, which uses a bunch of funky filters to block out the light from the star to see the halo around it. Edit: These are the detectors, which are the cameras. There is only one mirror assembly (with two mirrors) that focuses light into these instruments.
- dylan604 2mo agoI'm really excited about observations we're about to see over the next decade. Bringing NGR online and combining with Rubin, Hubble, and JWST will give us imagery and hopefully new discoveries and understanding. I had the fortune of letting some of my neighbors through a telescope for the first time for the partial lunar eclipse. I say fortune, because it is amazing to be a part of someone having that experience that never disappoints. Even if they've seen images from NASA/ESA, putting your eyeball directly to the 'scope is much more meaningful.
- ginko 2mo ago[flagged]
- dang 2mo agoPlease don't do this here.
- jibal 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman P.S. I didn't post this at top level ... it was in response to a silly joke about the Romans which has since been flagged by dang ... apparently my comment was relocated to the top level but it's redundant here as this link was already given in the post (which I didn't see when I made this comment.)
- alsetmusic 2mo agoOh, thank goodness. I greatly appreciate the link. I was confused and annoyed and now I’m happy.
- fortran77 2mo ago[flagged]
- intuitionist 2mo agoYeah this is a garden path headline if I’ve ever seen one
- tclancy 2mo agoWas wondering why we needed a telescope to find dirtbags on earth.
- delichon 2mo agoThe data, up to 1.4TB/day raw compressed, is planned to be fully open, every observation is public as soon as it is processed with no embargo. You can just download it and start looking for Rama or Oumuamua or plan your exoplanetary real estate empire or make a really big sandbox game. I at least want somebody to make me a cool screen saver. You could easily be the first person to see a galaxy. I wonder how much space exploration could be financed by auctioning off naming rights.
- Carrok 2mo ago> When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.
- enahs-sf 2mo agoOn a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
- ghgr 2mo ago> every observation is public as soon as it is processed with no embargo That's a big deal. Do you have any source for that? (I couldn't find it in the ones you linked). This is great for humanity as a whole, but... poor grad students who now need to rush to publish their papers even sooner.
- delichon 2mo agoData from all of Roman’s surveys will be made public as soon as it is processed, with no periods of exclusive access. https://www.nasa.gov/missions/roman-space-telescope/nasas-roman-mission-shares-detailed-plans-to-scour-skies/ https://www.nasa.gov/missions/roman-space-telescope/nasas-ro...
- ghgr 2mo agoThank you! From talking to a contact working with JWST, it sounds a bit trickier in practice. The data are public, but with Roman the idea is that you must process them on their computers rather than download everything locally, and you pay for the compute/storage you use.
- ReindeerFlotill 2mo agoThe Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) flight software is a surprisingly massive at over 100,000 source lines of C++ code, which is significantly larger than typical JPL payloads. It is running on a a LEON4 (SPARC) processor on a radiation-hardened Frontgrade Gaisler GR740 board, using Wind River's VxWorks. You can read all about it in the tech deep dive here https://workshop.ipac.caltech.edu/romancgi24/talks/Day2_Fluckiger.pdf https://workshop.ipac.caltech.edu/romancgi24/talks/Day2_Fluc...
- nightsd01 2mo agoI will never understand why NASA doesn't build at least two copies of expensive space telescopes like this. One single launch failure and boom (literally), the entire project is a failure? It wouldn't double the cost assuming they do it with even a modicum of efficiency and intelligence. And hey - assuming that the launch goes smoothly, you can get double the benefit
- gosub100 2mo agowhat if both of them blow up?
- ButlerianJihad 2mo agoStage 2 FTS is safed! Bon Voyage, RST!
- pwarner 2mo agowhy build one when you can build two for twice the price?
- loufe 2mo agoI always thought this was a ridiculous part of the movie but it truly stuck with me more anything.
- jiggawatts 2mo agoI regular consult for government agencies. It’s true, but the factor is ten, not two. And then they won’t even use any of the things they overpaid for!
- spuz 2mo agoI guess for one thing, these launches don't tend to fail and second, they actually do make duplicate missions sometimes. See Voyagers 1 and 2, Spirit and Opportunity and Curiosity and Perseverance.
- 2mo ago
- creamedcorn 2mo ago[flagged]
- syngrog66 2mo ago[flagged]
- NetMageSCW 2mo agoFromWikipedia: It is named after former NASA chief of astronomy Nancy Grace Roman.
- syngrog66 2mo agoI know that also relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- sajithdilshan 2mo agoI watched a documentary on how this telescope is going to be used with JWST. Basically the Nancy Grace telescope is a wide field high resolution telescope where they would photograph the same location in space over multiple days. Since it’s high resolution and wide space it would still capture a huge area in detail and then they would basically use the photos taken over days/weeks to cancel out the stars/galaxies that appeared on every photo and only take the diff. That would give the anomalies like supernova, etc. and then they would focus JWST on that anomaly to zoom in and observe it closely.
- guenthert 2mo agoMeanwhile it did launch and separated from launch vehicle. Most recent status update can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman/ https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman/
- erickhill 2mo agoI hate how some sites now (including NASA's) make finding the article text a mystery in its own right.
- thestandardnews 2mo ago[dead]