After funding struggles and a name change, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has been successfully launched. It will now make a three-month, one-million-mile journey to its orbit at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2) beyond the Moon.
From this vantage point, Roman will conduct an unprecedented survey of the universe. Its field of view is 100 times larger than Hubble’s and, according to NASA, it can survey the sky 1,000 times faster using its 300-megapixel infrared camera. Roman also has a Coronagraph system that can block and mask glare from stars, allowing it to directly image exoplanets, even smaller, older, and colder planets …
