Nancy Grace Roman: Interstellar Space Science Hero -- And Space 'Scope Launch Subject, In 2026-27!

We are visibly excited -- as about 18 months from now -- we, collectively should have a new tool, to get a handle on whether the vast power of dark energy will force the known Universe into an expanding forever mode -- or whether, eventually, billions of years from now, it will all collapse back in, on itself. [We've posted on this, dozens of times, stretching back nine years.]

There are few questions more fundamental than "How did we begin, and how will we. . . end?" The Roman scope will help us approach those answers, or at least refine our questioning. Here's the latest, from NASA:

. . .NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be a discovery machine, thanks to its wide field of view and resulting torrent of data. Scheduled to launch no later than May 2027, with the team working toward launch as early as fall 2026, its near-infrared Wide Field Instrument will capture an area 200 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope’s infrared camera, and with the same image sharpness and sensitivity.

Roman will devote about 75% of its science observing time over its five-year primary mission to conducting three core community surveys that were defined collaboratively by the scientific community. One of those surveys will scour the skies for things that pop, flash, and otherwise change, like exploding stars and colliding neutron stars. . . .

Type Ia supernovae are useful as cosmological probes because astronomers know their intrinsic luminosity, or how bright they inherently are, at their peak. By comparing this with their observed brightness, scientists can determine how far away they are. Roman will also be able to measure how quickly they appear to be moving away from us. By tracking how fast they’re receding at different distances, scientists will trace cosmic expansion over time. . . .

Now you know. Be excellent to one another. Off grid most of day, tomorrow -- at hospital. Carry on. Grin.

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