NASA has chosen SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket to launch its next major space telescope, a wide-field observatory that should directly complement the brand new James Webb Space Telescope.
Originally known as the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST), NASA recently renamed the mission in honor of Nancy Grace Roman, a founding force behind the Hubble Space Telescope. Fittingly, the basic design of the Rome Space Telescope is reminiscent of Hubble in many ways, due to the fact that the mission exists only because the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) chose to donate an unused multi-billion dollar spy satellite – one that was actually a secret reverse to Earth version of Hubble.
However, thanks to decades of improvements in the electronics, electromechanics and instrumentation of spacecraft and space telescopes, the RST will be dramatically more capable than the Hubble telescope it resembles. And now, after several years of fighting for survival, the Rome Space Telescope is officially traveling to space – SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket.
NASA chose the Falcon Heavy to launch the Rome Space Telescope, which is designed to study dark energy and dark matter, search for and image exoplanets, and more. Liftoff is targeted for no earlier than October 2026 from Launch Complex 39A in Florida pic.twitter.com/pwPqEZLSEc
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 19, 2022
The Falcon Heavy continues to be a bit of a paradox, winning contract after contract for increasingly high-value flagship launches despite not having launched once in more than three years. It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point, as the core missions increasingly entrusted to the Falcon Heavy are much more likely to encounter significant delays from spacecraft. At one point in late 2021, for example, SpaceX had five Falcon Heavy launches tentatively scheduled for 2022 — all but one of which had already been delayed by several months to a year or more. Seven months into 2022, none of those missions have launched, and it’s looking increasingly likely that the Falcon Heavy will be lucky enough to fly at all this year.
However, the Rome Space Telescope joins an impressive manifesto that includes the multi-billion dollar GOES-U weather satellite, NASA’s ~$5 billion Europa Clipper, two lunar orbiting space station modules (HALO and PPE), the Asteroid Explorer NASA’s Psyche, a large Astrobotic Griffin lander carrying NASA’s VIPER rover, two large geostationary communications satellites, and three missions for the US military. The RST is the 11th contract to launch the rocket between now and mid-2020.
Although it has similar resolution, RST’s main wide-field instrument will have a field of view 100 times larger than Hubble’s, meaning the new telescope will be able to collect more data in a similar amount of time. Its main goals include measuring “light from one billion galaxies over the lifetime of the mission” and performing a “microlensing survey of the inner Milky Way to find ~2,600 exoplanets.” A second coronagraph instrument will “perform high-contrast imaging and spectroscopy of dozens of individual nearby exoplanets.” According to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “The Coronagraph provides a crucial step in the preparation of future missions aimed at [directly] image and characterize Earth-like planets [that are] 10 billion times fainter than the host star.”
According to NASA, “the telescope’s science program also includes dedicated research to address outstanding questions [about the nature and] effects of dark energy and dark matter, and a significant program for general investigators to enable further studies of astrophysical phenomena to achieve other scientific goals.
Because RST is also focused on infrared wavelengths of light, it could be an excellent companion to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). While RST is a wide-ranging observing observatory that aims to observe and catalog billions of galaxies, stars and planets, JWST’s much larger mirror is optimized for close-up observations of individual targets or deep looks at small slices of the sky. The RST could eventually work a bit like an MRI or CAT scan to the JWST biopsy, telling the surgeon where to look but only hinting at what it might find.
According to NASA, the Space Telescope’s ~$4.3 billion Falcon Heavy launch contract will cost a whopping $255 million to send the spacecraft to the L2 Sun-Earth Lagrange point about 800,000 kilometers (~500,000 miles ) from the ground. NASA’s contract to launch the even more expensive Europa Clipper spacecraft all the way to Jupiter on a fully expendable Falcon Heavy rocket is expected to cost less than $180 million.
The NASA press release also claimed that the RST would be ready for launch as early as October 2026. Another press release from September 2021 did not mention the 2026 target and only noted that the RST launch was planned no later from May 2027
SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket to launch NASA’s Rome Space Telescope
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