NASA has selected SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket to launch its next large space telescope – Roman, a wide-angle astronomical telescope that will be used to complement the James Webb Space Telescope that just took to the skies, with a goal of no sooner than October 2026.
It was originally called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), but NASA recently gave it its name in honor of Nancy Grace Roman, the key contributor behind the Hubble Space Telescope.
Simply put, the basic design of “Roman” is similar in many ways to the Hubble Space Telescope, as the very existence of the mission is based on a multi-billion dollar satellite donated by the U.S. NRO.
However, with decades of technological leadership in electronics, electromechanical equipment, and spacecraft and space telescope instrumentation over the 1990 Hubble, WFIRST will have performance far beyond that of the Hubble telescope.
