NASA Launches Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Sunday. It lifted off at 7:26 a.m. from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket carried the telescope into space. The telescope reached orbit just 10 minutes after liftoff.
It is now starting its science mission. Roman will travel for more than three months.
It is heading to a final spot called Lagrange point 2. That spot is about 1 million miles from Earth.
Scientists are calling the bus-sized telescope a discovery machine. The telescope is named after Nancy Grace Roman.
She was NASA's first chief astronomer. Roman will study dark energy, dark matter and planets outside our solar system.
Scientists expect it to survey hundreds of millions of stars. It should also survey billions of galaxies. Its wide view will let it work much faster than the Hubble telescope.
Key Terms 5
- Lagrange point 2 A stable spot in space far from Earth, used for telescopes.
- dark energy A mysterious force thought to make the universe expand faster.
- dark matter Invisible material that affects gravity but cannot be seen directly.
- Hubble telescope An older space telescope that has studied the universe since 1990.
- Falcon Heavy A powerful rocket built by the company SpaceX.