Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

JJumpCrisscross about 4 hours ago 25 commentsRead Article on science.nasa.gov

RU version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

100% Positive

Analyzed from 1047 words in the discussion.

Discussion (25 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

willis936•about 2 hours ago

Part of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable to the fact that this is a retrofit of an obsolete spy satellite. The leftovers of the security sector will be the most advanced scientific space surveyor. I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities.

ChocolateGod•about 2 hours ago

IIRC the mirror is from a spy satellite, but the chassis and electronics are all NASA.

dfxm12•about 2 hours ago

People shouldn't be shocked that employees of the US government can deliver things ahead of schedule and under budget.

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.

ChocolateGod•6 minutes ago

[delayed]

jryle70•about 2 hours ago

> 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?

Reason077•about 3 hours ago

Roman is scheduled to launch tomorrow (Aug 30) on a Falcon Heavy rocket:

https://www.space.com/news/live/nancy-grace-roman-telescope-...

marze•about 3 hours ago

For some tasks, surveys in particular, field of view is critical. You would need many Hubble telescopes to do what Roman can do mapping everything out there.

"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...

SoftTalker•about 3 hours ago

And yet the narrow-field Hubble produced this famous image

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."

drfloyd51•about 2 hours ago

Your point being?

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.

mrkpdl•about 1 hour ago

I think their point is that it’s amazing.

danilor•about 1 hour ago

I'm wondering what are the considerations for having multiple detectors instead of a single large one! Does anybody have an idea? is it just because it's easier?

stuart78•about 2 hours ago

This video linked from the site is quite good at adding a sense of scale to the undertaking. I also love that Roman will be supported by Hubble and Webb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDwemQH2zDU

BoredomIsFun•about 3 hours ago

Thankfully, it is not Nancy Ann Grace.

y-curious•about 2 hours ago

The telescope will be used to film sensationalist TV about missing kids

hyperhello•16 minutes ago

It watches the stars for evidence of guilt.

Mistletoe•about 1 hour ago

I was scared for a second that the current clown administration had named a space telescope after Nancy Grace the tv personality.

macintux•about 1 hour ago

I suppose we should be grateful he didn’t force his own name at the last minute. I suppose he still has time.

ck2•about 3 hours ago

I'm still holding my breath on this one, will be most amazing telescope in my lifetime

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

walrus01•about 3 hours ago

Is it really 500 Mbps of data headed to Earth 24x7? I'd be very interested to see any available public info about the earth station infrastructure being set up for that.

consumer451•about 2 hours ago

> 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

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.

ourmandave•about 1 hour ago

That's like Hubble funding cuts back in the '70s.

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...

ck2•33 minutes ago

yeah but we don't recover from this one like the 70s

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)

ButlerianJihad•about 3 hours ago

It is not 500mbps but 500Mbps. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/commu...

"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

ck2•about 2 hours ago

my brain is not what it used to be due to long-covid so it's very possible I made a mistake

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)

Sharlin•about 2 hours ago

The GP is alluding to the fact that the prefix "m" means milli-, not mega-. But that's pointless pedantry. Nobody would ever think that you meant 0.5 bits per second, and bit isn't a SI unit anyway.

ButlerianJihad•about 2 hours ago

No, your cable modem would be 1.08 terabytes per day.

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.