NASA officials looked on as the agency’s Pegasus barge creeped into the Kennedy Space Center turn basin, carrying a space telescope with a field of vision 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope.
Meet the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope due to launch later this summer. Named for NASA’s first chief astronomer, the “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope”, the telescope left Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and traveled more than 800 miles aboard NASA’s Pegasus barge, arriving at Kennedy Space Center on Sunday, June 21.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to be more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in orbit since 1990. This new telescope will see exoplanets, planet-forming disks, and possibly a billion galaxies. It will also look into the puzzling nature of dark energy, an invisible force in space which could explain certain phenomena in the universe.
“Roman will help answer some of the biggest questions in science, investigating dark matter, dark energy, and the structure of the universe. Its images will be so large and detailed, there isn’t a screen in existence big enough to display them,” wrote NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman in an April post on X.
The telescope will launch as soon as August 30 atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A. The launch is coming earlier than planned with Isaacman stating the work on the telescope was completed eight months ahead of schedule and under budget.
Brooke Edwards is a Space Reporter for Florida Today. Contact her at bedwards@floridatoday.com or on X: @brookeofstars.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman telescope arrives at Kennedy Space Center
Reporting by Brooke Edwards, Florida Today / Florida Today
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By Brooke Edwards, Florida Today | USA TODAY Network
