NASAs Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: Broadening Our Cosmic Horizons
Scheduled to launch in the mid2020s, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, formerly known as WFIRST, will function as Hubbles wideeyed cousin. While just as sensitive as Hubble s cameras, the Roman Space Telescope s 300megapixel Wide Field Instrument will image a sky area 100 times larger. This means a single Roman Space Telescope image will hold the equivalent detail of 100 pictures from Hubble. The missions wide field of view will allow it to generate a neverbeforeseen big picture of the universe, which will help astronomers explore some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos, like why the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. Some scientists attribute the speedup to dark energy, an unexplained pressure that makes up 68 of the total content of the cosmos. The Wide Field Instrument will also allow the Roman Space Telescope to measure the matter in hundreds of millions of distant galaxies through a phenomenon dictated by Einstein
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