This, folks, is how it is done. The best and brightest certainly showed their stuff — early this Sunday morning, down at the Cape.
Roman is powered up, in perfect radio communication with the Deep Space Network dishes, and headed out to the assigned LaGrange Point. Here’s NASA’s blog team on it all (but I’ve edited out the gratuitous commercials, for Musk’s Falcon Heavy lauch vehicle):
…Now on a three-month, million-mile journey to its final orbit, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon reveal the universe’s darkest secrets. The mission launched at 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Roman pairs a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to explore vast swaths of the sky and probe deeply into cosmic history. This flagship mission will help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, and worlds outside of our solar system, known as exoplanets. Its surveys will support a broad range of research extending far beyond the mission’s main science goals.
“Roman is exactly the kind of success story we want to see across NASA… delivered ahead of schedule and on budget, this mission reflects more than a decade of dedication from the NASA workforce and our industry partners. Now, Roman will give us a new atlas of the universe, push the boundaries of discovery, and demonstrate what is possible when America’s space program pairs bold ambition with disciplined execution….”
The ground control team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, began receiving telemetry data from Roman seven minutes after launch….
Throughout the rest of Roman’s three-month commissioning period, scientists will run the instruments through a series of calibrations and tests. NASA anticipates releasing Roman’s first images by early 2027.
Roman will send back 1.4 terabytes of data every day, the highest data rate of any NASA astrophysics mission, so far. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and citizen scientists will help sift through it and flag significant findings, which astronomers can then study.
“We’ve never been able to view the universe with eyes like Roman’s before,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “There’s no telling what more we’ll know and have seen by this time next year….”
Onward — grinning widely. A “paler hidden figure” no more — thank you for your decades of tireless service Nancy Grace Roman — this is a very fitting legacy to remember your name by.
नमस्ते
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