Nördnytt! 🤓Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5905370/nasa-nancy-grac...
- delichon - 21135 sekunder sedanThe data, up to 1.4TB/day raw compressed, is planned to be fully open, every observation is public as soon as it is processed with no embargo. You can just download it and start looking for Rama or Oumuamua or plan your exoplanetary real estate empire or make a really big sandbox game. I at least want somebody to make me a cool screen saver.
You could easily be the first person to see a galaxy.
I wonder how much space exploration could be financed by auctioning off naming rights.
- marze - 46657 sekunder sedanFor some tasks, surveys in particular, field of view is critical. You would need many Hubble telescopes to do what Roman can do mapping everything out there.
"What really makes Roman stand out is that it is designed for wide-field imaging. The cameras on telescopes can often only detect objects in a very small patch of sky. If we use the size that the full moon appears in the sky as our guide, Hubble’s field of view is often smaller than that —meaning each picture it takes is of a patch of sky smaller than the full moon. Webb’s instruments often are even smaller than Hubble’s. Each picture taken by Roman, however, will be larger than the full moon, allowing it to survey more of the sky much faster than Hubble or Webb."
https://science.psu.edu/news/ask-expert-will-roman-help-reve...
- Reason077 - 46390 sekunder sedanRoman is scheduled to launch tomorrow (Aug 30) on a Falcon Heavy rocket:
https://www.space.com/news/live/nancy-grace-roman-telescope-...
- willis936 - 43412 sekunder sedanPart of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable to the fact that this is a retrofit of an obsolete spy satellite. The leftovers of the security sector will be the most advanced scientific space surveyor. I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities.
- dylan604 - 35253 sekunder sedanI'm really excited about observations we're about to see over the next decade. Bringing NGR online and combining with Rubin, Hubble, and JWST will give us imagery and hopefully new discoveries and understanding.
I had the fortune of letting some of my neighbors through a telescope for the first time for the partial lunar eclipse. I say fortune, because it is amazing to be a part of someone having that experience that never disappoints. Even if they've seen images from NASA/ESA, putting your eyeball directly to the 'scope is much more meaningful.
- nightsd01 - 13500 sekunder sedanI will never understand why NASA doesn't build at least two copies of expensive space telescopes like this. One single launch failure and boom (literally), the entire project is a failure?
It wouldn't double the cost assuming they do it with even a modicum of efficiency and intelligence. And hey - assuming that the launch goes smoothly, you can get double the benefit
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- stuart78 - 42254 sekunder sedanThis video linked from the site is quite good at adding a sense of scale to the undertaking. I also love that Roman will be supported by Hubble and Webb.
- danilor - 39915 sekunder sedanI'm wondering what are the considerations for having multiple detectors instead of a single large one! Does anybody have an idea? is it just because it's easier?
- jibal - 24753 sekunder sedanhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman
P.S. I didn't post this at top level ... it was in response to a silly joke about the Romans which has since been flagged by dang ... apparently my comment was relocated to the top level but it's redundant here as this link was already given in the post (which I didn't see when I made this comment.)
- BoredomIsFun - 45945 sekunder sedanThankfully, it is not Nancy Ann Grace.
- Mistletoe - 40783 sekunder sedanI was scared for a second that the current clown administration had named a space telescope after Nancy Grace the tv personality.
- ck2 - 46479 sekunder sedanI'm still holding my breath on this one, will be most amazing telescope in my lifetime
parked in L2 a million miles away with 500mbps data transfer rate (1.5TB per DAY)
we've made it past DOGE destroying it
we've made it past him renaming it after himself and putting his mugshot on it
but Musk still needs to send it out of orbit without explosions, so here's hoping
(Falcon Heavy, don't tell me the odds)
* https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/6983/
* JWST vs Roman comparison https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14942/
* https://www.wired.com/story/nasas-nancy-grace-roman-space-te...
* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-roman-space...
* https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5905370/nasa-nancy-grac...
did not know and it's horrific Roman started as a billion dollar spy satellite sitting in a warehouse unused, but okay we got the crumbs from $20 Trillion in military spending I guess
oh and while the smallest planet Roman can image will be Jupiter-sized, Roman's successor would be able to image earth-like planets
except The Habitale Worlds Observatory Space Telescope HWO was scheduled for 2040 and now will not happen in my lifetime because DOGE got that one, Congress awarded it $150 Million and DOGE changed it to $5 Million
* https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/programs/habitable-wor...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitable_Worlds_Observatory
- ReindeerFlotill - 19506 sekunder sedan[dead]
- fortran77 - 24057 sekunder sedan[flagged]
- syngrog66 - 11448 sekunder sedanunfortunate name
- ginko - 27111 sekunder sedan[flagged]
- creamedcorn - 11887 sekunder sedanThat's great! The US is the best tech innovation country in the world with the best curiosity and the sharpest people. Everyone else just tries to copy.