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NASA launches its Roman Space Telescope to explore the hidden universe
CBS News • • general
Key Points:
- NASA's $4.3 billion Roman Space Telescope was launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket to travel to Lagrange Point 2, a million miles from Earth, where it will map the cosmos using a 300-megapixel wide-field camera.
- The telescope will investigate dark energy, which drives the universe's accelerated expansion, and dark matter, which holds galaxies together, aiming to resolve key cosmological questions including the "Hubble tension."
- Roman's advanced coronagraph instrument will block starlight to detect and analyze the atmospheres of Jupiter-sized exoplanets, potentially identifying their chemical compositions for the first time.
- The mission is expected to discover over 100,000 exoplanets, catalog billions of stars and galaxies, and observe tens of thousands of supernovae and other transient cosmic events.
- NASA officials and former President Trump celebrated the successful launch, highlighting the mission's potential to revolutionize our understanding of the universe and advance exoplanet research.
