NASA’s new space telescope en route to survey Milky Way center

A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carrying NASA’s next huge space telescope blasted off Sunday from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is headed on a three-month journey to a final orbit point roughly a million miles from Earth. The telescope separated safely from the rocket 30 minutes into the flight, according to NASA. It will begin transmitting images over the next few weeks as scientists run a series of tests. The space agency estimates that the Roman telescope has a field of view at least 100 times larger than the currently functioning Hubble telescope, launched in 1990.

The Roman telescope, named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, will peer into the galactic bulge region at the center of the Milky Way, according to NASA. The region is densely packed with stars and planets that surround a supermassive black hole. The telescope’s survey will observe six sections of that bulge—one in the bulge’s very center and five others nearby—for 438 days, spread over five years. The telescope will capture the entire survey area, including hundreds of millions of stars, every 12 minutes. The telescope will also conduct surveys focused on exoplanets, dark matter, and dark energy.

The Roman telescope will be able to take more sensitive measurements than its predecessors because it will do so from a special point in space, known as the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, according to NASA. This spot, about 930,000 miles away from Earth in the direction opposite the sun, has a balance between gravitational forces that helps objects keep a steady orbit.

Dig deeper: Read my report on awards given to the NASA Artemis II crew and plans for a new space academy.