![]() Nancy Roman, the Mother of Hubble – well deserved. “I can think of no better name for WFIRST, which will be the successor to NASA’s Hubble and Webb Telescopes.”įormer Senator Barbara Mikulski, who worked with NASA on the Hubble and WFIRST space telescopes, said, "It is fitting that as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, NASA has announced the name of their new WFIRST telescope in honor of Dr. “It is because of Nancy Grace Roman’s leadership and vision that NASA became a pioneer in astrophysics and launched Hubble, the world’s most powerful and productive space telescope,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. She left behind a tremendous legacy in the scientific community when she died in 2018. It will investigate long-standing astronomical mysteries, such as the force behind the universe’s expansion, and search for distant planets beyond our solar system.Ĭonsidered the “mother” of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which launched 30 years ago, Roman tirelessly advocated for new tools that would allow scientists to study the broader universe from space. The newly named Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope – or Roman Space Telescope, for short – is set to launch in the mid-2020s. On, NASA renamed WFIRST in honor of Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer, who paved the way for space telescopes focused on the broader universe. The coronagraph will enable astronomers to detect and measure properties of planets in other solar systems. The Wide Field Instrument will provide a field of view of the sky that is 100 times larger than images provided by HST (Hubble Space Telescope). NASA's Agency Program Management Council, which evaluates the agency's programs and projects on content, risk management, and performance, made the decision to move forward with the mission on February 17, 2016. 1)Īfter years of preparatory studies, NASA is formally starting an astrophysics mission designed to help unlock the secrets of the universe - the WFIRST (Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope). NASA's current plans call for WFIRST to perform an extraordinarily broad set of scientific investigations: studying the newly-discovered phenomenon of dark energy, measuring the history of cosmic acceleration, completing the exoplanet census begun by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and demonstrating technology for direct imaging and characterization of exoplanets. That study, which laid out a blueprint for ground- and space-based astronomy and astrophysics for the decade of the 2010s, rated WFIRST as the top-priority large-scale mission. WFIRST is the top-ranked large space mission in the ”New Worlds, New Horizon Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics,” written by the U.S. WFIRST will have two instruments, the WFI (Wide Field Instrument), and the CGI (Coronagraph Instrument). ![]() ![]() The telescope has a primary mirror that is 2.4 m in diameter, and is the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope's primary mirror. WFIRST is a NASA observatory designed to perform wide-field imaging and surveys of the NIR (Near Infrared ) sky and to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. Roman Space Telescope / former WFIRST (Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope) Development Status Spacecraft Launch Sensor Complement Ground Segment References
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