Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
science.nasa.gov
science.nasa.gov
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.
That's a big deal. Do you have any source for that? (I couldn't find it in the ones you linked). This is great for humanity as a whole, but... poor grad students who now need to rush to publish their papers even sooner.
Data from all of Roman’s surveys will be made public as soon as it is processed, with no periods of exclusive access.
To your question specifically, in such a scenario they would charge an obscene amount for the bandwidth so you would be strongly incentivized not to download hundreds of GB of data from them.
My favorite part about this is that since names are largely a social construct, given the right situation, we could just nullify all the paid names and start again.
Sure, whoever does this will lose a lot of credibility. But say a disliked president signs an order forcing his country to stop accepting names that were paid, it only takes nobody reinstating it. And the rest of the world also giving up on the names, of course.
So you can totally fund space exploration this way, and then society can decide that it sucked and nullify it after the buyer is dead and unable to protest. I guess the family could, but...
"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...
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/science/universe-unc...
Those are galaxies. In a field of view "about 1/13th the diameter of the full Moon."
Hubble in certain circumstances can see narrow and far. If you express this as a cone, you can extrapolate a volume.
It might be very useful to have something that can search wide and maybe not as far; nearer Earth dangers perhaps. Express that as a wider cone and extrapolate volume.
As to speed, it is not just the camera view that makes NGR faster but also physical factors such as not having to wait for earth to get out of the way.
https://www.space.com/news/live/nancy-grace-roman-telescope-...
Roman has two science instruments, a wide-field imager (“WFI”) and a coronagraph (“CGI”) and they were both built by NASA for this purpose (optics, electronics, detectors, deformable mirrors).
The WFI optics includes filters and a prism and grism for spectroscopy, and of course the very large CCD arrays.
The coronagraph is a rather special tech demo and allows imaging of exoplanets (Jupiter-like) while blocking the light of the host star. (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/coron...). It’s a precursor to HWO which is mentioned down-thread.
The problems are that anyone gave Musk/doge the time of day and that we're too used to the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors.
Are you talking about SLS?
Oh maybe you'd say that is "Senate Launch System", it's complicated, job program, 50 states sharing, and so on?
And unlike SLS weren't no-bid
We should thank the government for spending tax money efficiently.
You should blame the legacy aerospace companies whom purposely inflate contracts and take forever to do things for there being a lack of competition, not Musk.
Yes, Musk is a crappy character, but that's not a reason to make things up. This isn't Reddit.
The point is this isn't happening.
Almost everything you're complaining about happened under Biden, who Musk wasn't on good terms with.
SpaceX is the cheapest provider of the services it offers, and the government is a large customer but has been less than half of revenue since before 2024.
If the government wants to build a space station (Vast, Axiom, Voyager) or land something(Firefly, Intuitive Machines) or someone on the moon(SpaceX, Blue Origin) , it will find contractors that can do all or part.
The contractors here are BAE Space & Mission Systems (fka Ball Aerospace), L3Harris, and Teledyne. i.e the "NASA" money always ends up at some corp. And complaining about SpaceX stealing money is ignorance.
It's worth noting that the primary contractor for the ISS is Boeing, but Leidos and KBR are involved.
The Artemis program was developed out of the Constellation program, which was initiated sometime around 2005 or 6.
Of course there have long been plans to go back to the moon because its a cool fun thing to do and whoever happens to be president would likely be well remembered for taking credit for it. That doesn't give it credibility as a useful endeavor.
Humans have intuition and curiosity, they can spot something quickly in the distance that looks peculiar, go to it and quickly inspect it.
That should be enough clue.
The Chinese car ban (not just electric mind you) was at the instigation/behest of Unions and Ford in particular. Another Biden thing
Blue Origin matters because they got more money to do less.
> How is landing on the moon not a publicity stunt?
That's fine, we all have our personal heros and villains. But don't be so disingenuous with your arguments or your reasoning.
Both KH-11 and Hubble had similar sized mirrors, but that wasn't because of design reuse, it was because that was the biggest primary mirror you could fit in the Space Shuttle cargo bay (1). In actual fact no KH-11 went into space on a Shuttle, but the plan up until the Challenger disaster had been for the STS to carry all US satellites into space, including the KH-11, which was designed around that cargo bay.
1: The space shuttle cargo bay was sized the way it was for NRO payloads, but it seems clear that the USAF wasn't thinking about KEEENAN when they requested that size- a design like that would be better if it was wider and didn't need to be nearly as long. My suspicion is, when NASA asked them what size they wanted for the bay, they took the last design they had- the just cancelled KH-10 Manned Orbiting Laboratory, and used that.
Things aren't as simple as more money = more good.
Rapid progress requires adversity, the kind you'll find when nations compete for military power, for example.
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
It’s true, but the factor is ten, not two.
And then they won’t even use any of the things they overpaid for!
When I worked for Mars Global Surveyor, one of the museum-pieces in the lobby was a glass case with the Viking spectrometer flight spare.
The flight spares were exceedingly useful when the spacecraft had some kind of trouble during its mission, because you could mock-up the flight spare in a lab and replicate many situations very closely, and propose solutions based on the mockups.
Bon Voyage, RST!
Any space telescope with a mirror, is a different story, e.g.
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/webbs-mirrors/
The RST has an 8ft mirror. The mirrors have to be ground and polished in a clean room to tolerances that are the highest in the world. I vaguely recall it's a square law or worse - for radius-to-time-to-polish. So you're paying for time, and you're paying for the expertise of one or two custom built places that can manufacture them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...
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.
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.)
Most recent status update can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman/
Since it’s high resolution and wide space it would still capture a huge area in detail and then they would basically use the photos taken over days/weeks to cancel out the stars/galaxies that appeared on every photo and only take the diff. That would give the anomalies like supernova, etc. and then they would focus JWST on that anomaly to zoom in and observe it closely.
Edit: These are the detectors, which are the cameras. There is only one mirror assembly (with two mirrors) that focuses light into these instruments.
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
"mbps" is a meaningless abbreviation. You need to consistently and correctly use capital letters when communicating technical terms. You cannot "e e cummings" your way into effective writing.
500 megabits per second works out to 5.4 terabytes per day. No idea where you get 1.5, unless you were thinking of 500Mb/hour!
60 × 60 × 24 × 500 × 1000000 ÷ 8
but 500 megabits per second to me is 500mbps?
ie. my cablemodem is 100mbps which is 100 megabits per second?
and that would [make Roman] 5.4 Terrabytes aka 5.4TB per day
but the transmitter is not at full speed full power 24/7
so it is 1.5TB per day in documentation that I do not have handy but vaguely remember
to repeat the more amazing part is that is from a MILLION MILES away, wow
(JWST "only" does 23mbps, 23 megabits per second)
Does it stop making sense when your calculations for the Roman telescope indicate slower speeds than your connection, which you say is 1/5th the speed?
Now, since the Roman telescope will be at an L2 point, signal acquisition will always be subject to the Earth's rotation. So there will be multiple ground stations involved across the globe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network
If the quoted rate by NASA of 1.5 terabytes per day is accurate, then it will not be downlinking 24/7, but in bursts. 500Mbps is also the max, where the actual range will be 250-500. We'll need to account for RFI and packet loss, etc.
I was so excited for this. It was the one thing I really wanted to see happen in my own lifetime.
What a deeply moronic waste.
The NASA budget was $5M as a placeholder, but Noel Hinners cut it to zero to light a fire under the community, instead of a bogus pretend-its-still-happening number.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Quest_f...
the illegal Iran War costs over $120 BILLION, has used over 1000 Tomahawks at $4 Million each (and 1250 patriot missiles)
a BILLION was stolen from nuclear missile maintenance fund for QatarForceOne
another BILLION was stolen for all the DC renovations so far that no-one asked for
billion diverted to his fake "peace board"
so there is money for war and drapes and gold statues but not science that benefits the world
hell he spends $2 MILLION EVERY WEEKEND for GOLF, first term and this term, half billion before he is gone
we could have had people on Mars for all that (not even a project I support but still would be worthy science)
06:25 AM Window Open
06:26 AM Window Close
Is it really just a 1 minute launch window? That seems incredibly tight. If there's any hitch in the countdown, that would pretty much mean a scrubbed launch. Not being well versed in orbital mechanics, why would the window be so short?
Falcon launches to the ISS typically have an instantaneous launch window (roughly, when the plane of the ISS's orbit sweeps over the launch site). If they miss it, they try again about a day later.
Falcon (both Heavy and its little sibling Falcon 9) uses subcooled densified propellants which limit how long it can sit waiting for launch while fueled before the LOX warms and expands too much.
A short window means they only have to compute and verify and program one trajectory.
You can get live countdowns and updates at https://www.spacex.com/launches which will link to first-party livestream coverage during the launch.
No need to go through third-party and advertising-laden dot-com sites.
The Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are intolerant to countdown holds late in the sequence. In particular, after propellant has been loaded, there must be no delay in launch. Any countdown holds will necessarily turn into a scrub for the day, as the propellant must be completely unloaded and the process restarted to prepare for launch. With the instantaneous window, it'll either be "go/no-go" at 07:26am EDT, or they'll go-around to another opportunity on Monday morning, around 07:22am.
The Falcon Heavy has made 12 launches and all of them have been successful. It's built using the same engines as the Falcon 9, which has become the boringly reliable workhorse of space launch, and the rocket cores are very similar in design. I'd bet on a successful launch, and probably on a successful landing of the side boosters.
(Do we really need to politicize launch vehicles, of all things?)
You can read all about it in the tech deep dive here https://workshop.ipac.caltech.edu/romancgi24/talks/Day2_Fluc...