The new device on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could soon make the dream of discovering Earth-like planets a reality.
According to SciTech Daily, the team responsible for the Nancy Grace Roman mission at NASA has integrated the Roman Coronagraph into this space telescope, marking a significant milestone in exoplanet exploration technology.
Goddard engineers integrating the new Roman Coronagraph into the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope – (Image: NASA).
The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is the most advanced telescope currently being developed by NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center, scheduled for launch in May 2027.
This state-of-the-art cosmic observatory is named after astronomer Nancy Grace Roman (1925-2018), a pioneering NASA scientist in the development of telescopes.
Sometimes referred to simply as “Roman”, the name also evokes “Rome”, likening it to NASA’s “Roman warrior.”
According to NASA, the new Roman Coronagraph will play a crucial role in enhancing the direct observation capabilities of exoplanets – planets beyond our solar system – and in the search for habitable worlds.
This device will include a complex mask and mirror system designed to block out the bright light from the host stars of the target planets.
This will enable scientists to observe tiny planets that are close to their host stars, which previous telescopes could not detect due to being “blinded.”
Most importantly, these could be worlds similar to our own Earth.
Moreover, with its advanced observational capabilities compared to its predecessors, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope promises to uncover more potential biosignatures from those worlds.
The Roman Coronagraph is also designed to serve as a technological stepping stone for identifying and cataloging targets that should be analyzed in more detail by even more advanced telescopes in the future.
One of the future successors following the Nancy Grace Roman will be the “Habitable Worlds Observatory,” a telescope specifically designed to search for signs of extraterrestrial life.
The Roman Coronagraph is primarily developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), with contributions from ESA, JAXA, CNES (the space agencies of Europe, Japan, and France) and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.
