The NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team is actively preparing for the mission's enormous data output. The newly chosen infrastructure teams will use simulations, collaborate with other telescopes, and calibrate the telescope's tools. The goal is to be fully equipped by the May 2027 launch to discover numerous cosmic objects and solve mysteries such as dark energy. Credit: NASA
POT's Roman space telescope The team is preparing for launch in 2027, using simulations and collaborations with other telescopes to maximize scientific output and explore cosmic mysteries such as dark energy.
Their work will complement the additional efforts of other teams and individuals around the world, who will join forces to maximize Roman's scientific potential. The goal is to ensure that when the mission launches in May 2027, scientists already have the tools they need to discover billions of cosmic objects and help unravel mysteries such as dark energy.
This animation shows a simulation of the type of science astronomers will be able to do with future deep-field observations from NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The gravity of intervening galaxy clusters and dark matter can cause light from more distant objects to bend, warping their appearance as shown in the animation. By studying distorted light, astronomers can study the elusive dark matter, which can only be measured indirectly through its gravitational effects on visible matter. As an added benefit, this lens also makes it easier to see the more distant galaxies whose light they magnify. Simulations like this help astronomers understand what future Roman observations could tell us about the universe and provide useful data to validate data analysis techniques. Credit: Caltech-IPAC/R. Hurt
The role of simulations in preparation
Simulations form the core of the preparatory efforts. They allow scientists to test algorithms, estimate Roman's scientific performance, and refine observation strategies so that we learn everything we can about the universe.
Teams will be able to spread different cosmic phenomena across a simulated data set and then run machine learning algorithms to see how well they can automatically find phenomena. Developing quick and efficient ways to identify underlying patterns will be vital given Roman's huge data collection rate. The mission is expected to accumulate 20,000 terabytes (20 petabytes) of observations containing trillions of individual measurements of stars and galaxies over the course of its five-year primary mission.
"The prep work is complex, in part because everything Roman will do is quite interconnected," McEnery said. "Each observation will be used by several teams for very different scientific cases, so we are creating an environment that makes it as easy as possible for scientists to collaborate."
Collaborations with other observatories
Some scientists will make pioneering observations using other telescopes, including NASA Hubble Space Telescopehe Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and Japan's PRIME (Primary Focus Infrared Microlensing Experiment), located at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Sutherland. These observations will help astronomers optimize Roman's observing plan by identifying the best individual targets and regions of space for Roman and better understand the data the mission is expected to provide.
Some teams will explore how they could combine data from different observatories and use multiple telescopes together. For example, using PRIME and Roman together would help astronomers learn more about objects found through warped spacetime. And Roman scientists will be able to rely on archived Hubble data to look back in time and see where cosmic objects were and how they behaved, building a more complete history of the objects that Roman astronomers will use to study. Roman will also identify interesting targets that observatories such as NASA's James Webb Space Telescope You can zoom in for more detailed studies.
This series of images shows how astronomers find stellar streams by reversing light and dark, similar to negative images, but stretched to highlight weak streams. Color images of each of the nearby galaxies presented are overlaid to scale to highlight the easily visible disk. The galaxies are surrounded by huge halos of hot gas dotted with sporadic stars, seen as the shadowy regions that enclose each galaxy here. NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is expected to improve these observations by resolving individual stars to understand the stellar populations of each stream and view stellar streams of various sizes in even more galaxies. Credit: Carlin et al. (2016), based on images from Martínez-Delgado et al. (2008, 2010)
Many teams will be needed working in parallel to plan each Roman scientific case. "Scientists can take something that Roman will explore, like faint streams of stars that extend far beyond the apparent edges of many galaxies, and consider all the things needed to study them really well," said Dominic Benford, a scientist with Roman's program. at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. “That could include algorithms for faint objects, developing ways to measure the positions of stars very precisely, understanding how the effects of detectors could influence observations and knowing how to correct them, devising the most effective strategy for imaging stellar streams and much more."
Innovation and Software Development
One group is developing processing and analysis software for Roman's coronagraph instrument (see video below). This instrument will demonstrate several cutting-edge technologies that could help astronomers directly image planets beyond our solar system. This equipment will also simulate different objects and planetary systems that the Coronagraph could reveal, from dust disks surrounding stars to Cold old worlds similar to Jupiter..
The mission's science centers are preparing to manage Roman's data pipeline and archive and establish systems to plan and execute observations. As part of a separate upcoming effort, they will convene a survey definition team that will take all the preparatory information that scientists are now generating and all the interests of the astronomical community at large to determine in detail the optimal observing plans for Roman.
"The team hopes to coordinate and channel all of the preliminary work," McEnery said. "It's a challenging but also exciting opportunity to set the stage for Roman and ensure that each of our future observations of him contributes to a wealth of scientific discoveries."
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC's Southern California Telescope Science Institute. Space Center in Baltimore and a scientific team made up of scientists from several research institutions. Major industrial partners are Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
