proposed killing<\/a> the project multiple times) said on speakerphone. \u201cYou are doing a fantastic job.\u201d<\/p>\nRoman was initially projected to come in over budget, but a significant course correction helped the telescope launch on budget and ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n
While JPLers are already planning their celebrations, Roman coronagraph project manager Feng Zhao said the team wouldn\u2019t truly be able to relax \u201canytime soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the next three months, Roman will deploy its antenna, adjust its course, and power on its two instruments: JPL\u2019s planet hunter and a night-sky surveyor called the Wide Field Instrument.<\/p>\n
Roman\u2019s final destination is the same cosmic parking lot where the James Webb Space Telescope resides: a million miles from Earth, far past the moon. At this spot, Earth\u2019s and the sun\u2019s gravity create a stable point, allowing the spacecraft to better conserve fuel.<\/p>\n
Then, it\u2019s time for some \u201cvery cool science,\u201d Zhao said.<\/p>\n
Once in operation, the Coronagraph Instrument will attempt to observe planets that are 100 million times dimmer than their host star, a significant improvement over James Webb. To do it, the instrument can maneuver a flexible mirror with near-atomic-scale precision to focus the bright starlight into a pinprick, then block it with a mask so it can observe the dim planet.<\/p>\n
Those observations will inform an aspirational future mission \u2014 the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which aims to view Earth-like planets more than 1 billion times dimmer than their host stars.<\/p>\n
The Wide Field Instrument will focus on observing the night sky with the clarity of Hubble, but cover a vastly greater area than the 36-year-old observatory. With this, scientists hope to better understand dark matter and dark energy, which are invisible but make up 95% of the universe.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788364382_681_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with the space observatory Roman Telescope launching at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on Sunday.<\/p>\n
(Joel Kowsky \/ NASA \/ AP)<\/p>\n
Scientists do not yet know whether dark matter is made up of ancient black holes lurking throughout space, undiscovered heavy and slow particles, or unknown lighter and faster particles. The different theories provide different answers for how dark matter should clump. By looking at how dark matter\u2019s gravity bends the light of galaxies, Roman will be able to measure this clumping.<\/p>\n
As for dark energy, scientists long thought its strength has remained constant throughout the universe\u2019s history. However, recent observations suggest it is weakening \u2014 potentially jeopardizing Einstein\u2019s so far unblemished theory of general relativity and calling into question the leading description for how the universe will die.<\/p>\n
Scientists hope Roman\u2019s observations, paired with other cutting-edge space and ground-based telescopes, will help settle whether dark energy is constant, or if the recent measurements point to deeper problems in our understanding of the universe.<\/p>\n
NASA anticipates the telescope\u2019s first images will come in early 2027.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoing things like this \u2014 launching a telescope into space to uncover the mysteries of the universe \u2014 this is the best of humanity. This is what we can aspire to as a species,\u201d Rhodes said shortly after launch. \u201cSo, I\u2019m on top of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope \u2014 a $4.3-billion sister to the Hubble and James Webb telescopes \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[28841,28840,26101,26102,28842,28839,28838,22022,1360,15456,1339,27,28836,28305,28837,28338],"class_list":["post-44336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rome","tag-18000-pound-telescope","tag-cutting-edge-instrument","tag-dark-energy","tag-dark-matter","tag-gravity","tag-james-webb-telescope","tag-jpl-instrument-scientist","tag-launch","tag-nasa","tag-planet","tag-roman","tag-rome","tag-scientist","tag-space-coast","tag-spacex-rocket","tag-universe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"NASA\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788364382_894_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n