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By Gary Dagorn
Published today at 11:13 am (Paris)Subscribers only
NewsScheduled to launch on Sunday aboard a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this telescope is the US agency's most ambitious scientific mission since the James Webb Space Telescope in 2021.
After the Vera C. Rubin Observatory began operations earlier this year, another powerful telescope will open its eyes to the Universe. The Roman Space Telescope, designed and assembled by NASA, is scheduled to launch on Sunday, August 30, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for a mission lasting at least five years. A spectacular harvest of observations and results is expected.
The American space agency's flagship mission, the Roman is by far the most ambitious space telescope launched since James Webb in December 2021, and the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990. However, while Hubble was designed to observe only a tiny portion of the sky, Roman is a sophisticated machine built to relentlessly scan the heavens. It will not examine the entire sky in detail, as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory does from Chile, but the four major surveys it is scheduled to complete over five years are expected to advance astronomy in many fields and answer important questions, ranging from exoplanet science and cosmology to high-energy astrophysics.
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