NASA is designing a space telescope 100 times more powerful than Hubble

Ball Aerospace and Goddard Space Flight Center have completed the assembly of a huge 300-megapixel WFI (Wide Field Instrument) camera, the main scientific instrument of the Roman Space Telescope. It will conduct observations in the visible and near-infrared ranges, and its field of view is 100−200 times larger than that of the Hubble telescope cameras. The camera will now be tested in conditions simulating the space environment, after which it will be sent for integration with the telescope in the summer of 2024.

Roman will become NASA’s new large space observatory and will study protoplanetary disks and exoplanets, galaxy clusters, dark matter, and dark energy. The telescope will be launched into space in 2027 using a Falcon Heavy rocket.

NASA’s sixth major observatory was named in honor of astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, who played a key role in the creation of the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA has already developed an extensive observation plan for the first five years of Nancy Grace Roman’s work. Astronomers are confident that the telescope will help to find more than 1000 exoplanets that are so far away that no similar device has ever detected them.

In addition to NASA specialists, Chinese scientists are also working on creating a super-powerful telescope that will surpass Hubble. In 2024, the Chinese XunTian Space Telescope will be launched into Earth orbit. Astronomers in China believe that its equipment will allow for much better space observations than the American Hubble telescope.