NASA's latest and greatest space telescope, named after the agency's first female chief astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, is targeted to launch eight months early.
JUNE SKYWATCHING GUIDE: FROM PLANET CONJUNCTIONS TO NEW MOONS, HERE IS WHAT TO LOOK UP FOR
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is expected to have a field of view 100 times that of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Once launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the telescope will investigate dark matter, dark energy and the exoplanets of our galaxy.
NASA said on Wednesday that the space telescope is set to launch on Aug. 30, more than eight months ahead of its previously planned May 2027 launch date.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO REBUILD THE NEW GLENN ROCKET LAUNCHPAD AFTER MASSIVE EXPLOSION?
With less than three months to go, the Roman team is finishing up its final tasks at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and engineers are packing the telescope up for its voyage down to Kennedy Space Center later in June.
Once the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope arrives, it will go through inspections to make sure it travels well.
SKY SPECTACLE: METEOR DAZZLES MIDWEST NIGHT SKY, GENERATING REPORTS FROM 8 STATES
In the weeks leading up to launch day, engineers will put Roman under some tests and launch rehearsals before it is installed onto the SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket that will take it into space, NASA said.
"While the mission was designed with dark energy, dark matter and planets outside our solar system in mind, Roman’s unprecedented observational capability will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to explore a broad range of cosmic phenomena," NASA said in its new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope blog.
SEE IT: STRONG SOLAR FLARE CAUGHT ON CAMERA ERUPTING FROM THE SUN
Roman will work alongside the James Webb Space Telescope already in space.
With Roman's wide field of view and Webb's sensitivity and wavelength range, the pair will help NASA discover far more about the cosmos than either could learn alone, NASA said.
Nancy Grace Roman is known as "the mother of Hubble" for her decades of work at NASA to help create the Hubble Space Telescope.
She was a fundamental piece of NASA's early space exploration age, having been hired by the agency in 1959 and becoming their chief astronomer in 1960.
Roman worked at NASA for decades, before eventually retiring in 1997.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO REBUILD THE NEW GLENN ROCKET LAUNCHPAD AFTER MASSIVE EXPLOSION?
Roman died in 2018 at the age of 93. To read more about her and her legacy at NASA, visit their website here.
The post NASA's new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope set to launch months ahead of schedule appeared first on Fox Weather
