American Space Agency NASA has selected Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) to launch their new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, from California which will explore dark matter and other subjects, according to a release by the agency on Wednesday.
The telescope is the latest addition to NASA's fleet of spacecraft currently exploring the universe. The telescope will be launched using a Falcon 9 rocket from a launch pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Nancy Grace Roman, who is the former director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and is known as the "Mother of Hubble", is expected to attend the launch.
Nancy Grace Roman was born in 1930 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in astronomy and physics and earned her master's degree and doctorate at Georgetown University. She joined NASA in 1961 as part of its first class of astronauts after John Glenn became an American hero by orbiting Earth three times. Nancy Grace Roman has been credited with helping shape the Hubble Space Telescope project, which has led to some of astronomy's most important discoveries over its lifetime.
This new telescope will be able to produce images that are much more detailed than what can be seen through ground-based telescopes or even Hubble for that matter, according to NASA officials. The telescope will be able to explore dark matter, black holes, star formation and other subjects which have been impossible for astronomers until now. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will help install it when it arrives on board a commercial cargo ship next year, the agency said in its release on Wednesday.
It was originally named as the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST) and was later renamed in the honour of Dr Nancy Grace Roman. She did exceptional work at NASA that cleared the path for huge space telescopes.
https://t.co/WTa1JxzmZm — NASA Telescope (@NASATelescope) November 29, 2018
Roman was born in 1926 and it was her interest in astronomy that led her to pursue a career at NASA. She worked there for three decades, starting out as a secretary but quickly moving up the ranks to become the agency's first woman project scientist. She also played an integral role in the development of NASA's space telescope program and worked on several missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope, which launched in 1990. Roman retired from NASA in 1986 after 35 years with the agency but she continued to work at its Goddard Space Flight Center as a private consultant until 1994.
"Nancy Grace Roman's contributions to astronomy were immense," said Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division in Washington, D.C., according to The Washington Post . "Her work helped us understand our place in the universe."
Roman's death was confirmed by NASA, which tweeted about her passing on Monday.
"Nancy Grace Roman was an American astronomer who worked for NASA and was the first woman to lead a NASA project," the agency wrote. "She made great contributions to astronomy, including her work in the development of space telescopes."
The telescope also has a major general investigator programme to allow for further research into astrophysical phenomena in order to further other scientific agendas.
The agency's launch services program at Kennedy Space Centre is in charge of managing the SpaceX launch vehicle programme. Its Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is in charge of the Roman Space Telescope project.
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched on April 24, 1990 aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-31 mission. The telescope's initial orbit was highly elliptical and subject to significant orbital decay. However, in 1993 a series of service missions restored it to full working order by replacing key electronics and installing new solar panels.
The telescope is named after American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble, who made important contributions to astronomy in the 1920s and 1930s. He is known for showing that the recessional velocity of galaxies increases with their distance from each other, implying the Universe is expanding. In 1929, Hubble discovered a relationship between distance and radial velocity among extra-galactic nebulae, which was thought to support his conclusion that the Universe is expanding. After his death in 1953, the telescope was named in his honor.
Hubble is an active astronomical observatory, with four main instruments: the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). It has multiple gyroscopes and can be pointed with six degrees of freedom. It also has a fine guidance system, which allows it to be oriented with an accuracy of 0.03 arc seconds and kept within 0.005 arc seconds of its aim point by using Fine Guidance Sensors to actively control its position in orbit around Earth by using closed-loop feedback. A fifth instrument, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) was lost during STS-125 and has since been replaced by Hubble's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The ACS was installed by a servicing mission in 2002 during STS-109, while WFC3/COS was installed during STS-125 and STS-134, respectively. The current instruments are optimized for ultraviolet observations but have visible imaging capability as well; WFC3/COS can also observe red wavelengths up to 2200 nm.
Hubble's orbit outside Earth's atmosphere is not stable: over its lifetime it has flown three times closer to Earth than it currently does (at the point of launch), and has had five periods where it has been deliberately sent to a closer orbit. In addition, it is possible that Hubble could be used in the future for satellite deployment or servicing, two missions that would require it to re-enter Earth's atmosphere. Although the Hubble Space Telescope has not yet been serviced by a space shuttle, NASA has considered such missions as part of its Return to Flight plans following the "Columbia" disaster.
The first servicing mission was STS-61 (1993), during which astronauts installed new instruments, replaced vital parts such as gyroscopes and batteries, and repaired other components such as solar panels and antennae. The second servicing mission was STS-103 (1999), during which astronauts installed new instruments and made further repairs to those installed in 1993 (such as nulls brawl replacing broken thermal insulation on the HST). The third servicing mission was STS-125 (2009), during which astronauts installed two new instruments and repaired others. The fourth servicing mission was STS-134 (2011), during which astronauts installed two new instruments, made further repairs to those installed in 2009, and replaced a Fine Guidance Sensor and six backup flight sensors that were experiencing end of life issues.
The fifth servicing mission would have occurred after STS-135 aboard "Atlantis", but this was cancelled following the "Columbia" disaster in 2003. A sixth mission is planned for 2020–2024 with "Atlantis" or another ESM. A seventh mission has been proposed for 2028–2030.
In 2007, NASA's then-Chief Scientist, Dr. Thomas C. Parfrey, noted that "Hubble is the only true space observatory we have in the world today." He went on to say that it is not an exaggeration to say that Hubble's observations have changed our view of the universe forever and will continue to do so for years to come. The HST was named a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2010 at a ceremony in New York City as one of the first ten such landmarks recognized worldwide.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled for launch in 2019, will be NASA's successor to HST. It has a planned mission lifetime of 5 to 10 years and will be located near the Earth–Sun L2 point in a large heliocentric orbit. The JWST is designed to work at infrared wavelengths and will be able to observe some areas of the electromagnetic spectrum opaque to visible light including near-infrared light and longer wavelength infrared light (LIRG) not observable from Earth's surface or from low Earth orbit due to atmospheric absorption.
