NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the very first cutting-edge hunter of exoplanets, will launch into space in 2027. The Coronagraph Instrument aboard the telescope will target imaging distant planets that could host life.
In order to block this intense brightness, technologies such as masks, prisms, detectors, and adjustable mirrors work together to extract light from the planets that would otherwise be obscured by the glare of their host star. The Roman Space Telescope’s Coronagraph Instrument is about the size of a baby grand piano.
This mission will be a critical technology demonstration. Rob Zellem, deputy project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, underlines that the mission findings will complement future missions, including the Habitable Worlds Observatory. These missions are going to attempt the location of Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of their stars, making the finding of life beyond the solar system even more feasible.
The Roman Telescope will study a part of the sky 100 times larger than that which the Hubble Space Telescope views and will reach knowledge on the structure and history of the universe. With its research into exoplanets, let its Wide Field Instrument enables scientists to chart a billion galaxies, therefore enabling insight into dark energy and the expansion history of the universe.
Its design and mission goals are revolutionary, positioning the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to make critical astrophysical advances in general, but most importantly, in the search for planets hosting life. Yet another step for mankind deeper into space will surely show much more about faraway worlds surrounding us.
