Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: what makes it different and better than Hubble?

This is Gulf Coast live by Mike Kiniry. Thanks for joining us. NASA launched the new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center on August 30th, culminating a roughly 27 year arc from its conception to it finally leaving the planet Earth on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Nancy Grace Roman was an American astronomer who's known as the mother of Hubble for her central role in planning, championing, championing, and securing funding for the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in space since 1990. Grace Roman was NASA's first chief of astronomy, and she was the first woman to hold an executive leadership role at the agency. It will take about three months for the telescope bearing her name to reach its destination, roughly 930,000 miles from Earth, in a spot known as the L2 Lagrange point. That's a specific location in space where the gravities of the sun, the Earth, and our moon intersect, making it possible for something like a space telescope to remain relatively fixed in one place. This new telescope will allow astronomers to collect about 100 times more information about the universe and the stuff in it than the Hubble Space Telescope. In its initial primary five year mission. It will focus on finding and understanding exoplanets. Those are planets around other stars doing astrophysics, meaning studying other stars and how they behave and mapping our galaxy to hopefully get a better handle on both dark matter and dark energy, which together apparently make up most of the universe, even though neither can be directly measured yet. Joining me today to help us understand what the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is going to be doing, and what makes it different from its predecessors is Brendan Byrne. He's assistant news director at Central Florida Public Media and host of Are We There Yet? Welcome back to the show, Brendan. Thanks for having me, Mike. And Doctor Derek Buzasi is a senior instructional professor and co-director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at University of Chicago. Welcome back to you as well, Doctor Buzasi. Well, it's great to be back. Thanks for having me. Real quick, before we get into the telescope, tell us about your new role up there in Chicago. And Doctor Rosati. So I moved here about a year and a half ago. It was just an opportunity I couldn't pass up. I had been an undergraduate here eons ago. Never thought I'd make it back, but, they were looking for someone to kind of fill this role. That where I straddle sort of research and teaching and help out with the undergraduate program and a master's program that we're talking about developing. So it was it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. And despite the weather, in the winter, I do like Chicago. Well, I'm happy I can still reach out to you because I enjoy having you on the show for these kinds of things. So it launched, on August 30th. Brandon. Brendan, you happened to be at that launch? I was not at the launch. I was about maybe 30 miles west of, the Space Coast. And let me tell you, you can still see it. You can still feel it. Falcon heavy launch, 27 engines, all fire at the same time to, lift the payload into space. And, they need all of that, to get this, you know, tour bus sized spacecraft off the planet and to the Lagrange point, one that you describe, which is, about a million miles away. So, you know, even 40 miles away, I could I could see the bright lights of of those engines burning as is Roman left the planet. It's a beautiful sight. Doctor bizarre. Did you watch the launch? I mean, I don't think, you know, I guess the question is, is there something that takes as long as it takes for something like the satellite to be ready to go up? Are astronomers really focusing on the launch to, you know, hopefully watch it go off? Well? Yes. I mean, a lot of people were at the launch, a lot of people, of course, involved with the instrument or the telescope, but a lot of, astronomers who weren't necessarily involved went as well. I was actually out in California, the NASA workshop, and we, show the launch on, on the screen. And we didn't watch it in real time, but we watched it all the next day, and and everyone was cheering and applauding. So there's a lot of enthusiasm for this mission. So the main blurb on the NASA website says the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and astrophysics. And I'm going to ask you this, doctor, because the word settle seems like a strong word to me. What do you think? Yeah, I would agree. That's that's a pretty courageous claim. It would be impressive. You said worked out that way. Not impossible. But, you know, I think I think it will it will move us in the direction of resolving some questions. I don't know that I would claim that it would solve them. So who was Nancy Grace Roman? I don't know. Brendan, do you want to take a crack at this one? I mean, you had, the high level stuff in in the introduction to this conversation here. You know, she is considered the mother of Hubble and, was a very prominent astronomer. In fact, first chief astronomer at NASA. So this is essentially, you know, paying homage to, to a scientist and a person within NASA that did really, really incredible things. First running Doctor Bizarre. She is. She's somebody who you would have been aware of as you were coming up through the world of astronomy. Yeah. So, I mean, we didn't we didn't really overlap because she retired a little bit before I entered graduate school, but I certainly knew who she was. And she was a graduate student here at the University of Chicago. And it's funny because when I walk out of my office the next, the next door is a conference room, and it's the Nancy Grace Roman, conference room. So she's certainly still still around here in spirit, even though I would say, you know, as a woman in the 1940s and 50s, she wasn't treated particularly well while she was here. But she she rose above that, and, was incredibly successful and certainly is an inspiration to all of us. So, Brendan, you described it as being, school bus size. So describe what it looks like for a radio listener. It looks pretty sci fi to me. When I saw the pictures of it. Yeah, it is pretty sci fi. About the size of the school busses, as I mentioned. You know, with, these different antenna arrays that are coming out of it and, you know, mirrors on it, to, to look out into, into the cosmos, you know, to me, I think that the antennas are kind of the coolest thing on it because they're, they're so, they've got a really, really important task at getting all of this data back to to Earth. And there's a lot of data that's coming back, and you're going to talk about that later in this conversation. But, but yeah, it's it looks like a space telescope. I don't know how to describe it. Well, it seemed like, well, we'll get into what I was going to say there. So how is it powered? You know, what is the electric? Is it solar? Is it, something besides solar? The solar power? Yeah. So there's there's solar arrays on this as well that are, giving it power. So did either of you guys get to see it while it was being built? I can imagine possibly you, Brendan, being in, the clean room or whatever. At some point. This was one that I actually didn't get to see. And I'm kind of bummed about that. But, but I did get a chance to talk to some scientists and engineers that were working on it while they were in the clean room. So that's the closest I've been is, somebody brought their laptop to the clean room. My face was on it looking at the Roman space telescope. What about you, Derek? You know, you you've been closer than you'd been. I mean, I was I have not seen it before it was launched. I, you know, I certainly had, you know, colleagues who worked on it, who posted pictures from, you know, inside and just outside the clean room. So I saw it in that sense, but not, not any closer than that. So if I have it right, it was 27 years from conception to launch. So this would have been throughout your career, doctor. Buzasi. Is this a telescope that you've been tracking? You know, knowing that it was going to go up someday? I'd say that I first, kind of first kind of got under my radar maybe 15, 16 years ago, something like that. Maybe a little bit earlier than that in its previous incarnation as, w first it was that was the original acronym name for it, which was a wide field infrared, telescope. And, you know, it, it sort of morph from that into what we have now, partially because they were able to obtain NASA was able to obtain this 2.4m mirror from the National Reconnaissance Office and kind of build the build the, the spacecraft around that. So I've been aware of it since then. And the mission has changed a little bit, but not that much. I think, you know, what's changed mostly is the exoplanet part of it has grown, but the the the the dark matter part of it has been there all along. Can you flesh out a little bit more of what you just said there about how they acquired the, the, is it the mirror, the, the lens for it? It's a it's a mirror. It's a 2.4m diameter mirror. So it's the same size as Hubble. And, you know, coincidentally, that's about the largest mirror that you can put into the shuttle's bay. And so while we were building Hubble, we being astronomers to look up, you know, at the same time, on the on the dark side of things, the, the National Reconnaissance Office, the spy agency effectively was, was, building telescopes to look down at the rest of us. And, you know, they, of course, were designed to fit in the shuttle payload bay as well. So they are also size this way. And they turned, it turned out, had a spare 2.4m mirror, which they offered to NASA, as something they could build an instrument around. Interesting thing there. So I mentioned that it's going to be sitting in what's called a Lagrange point. Can you just explain that a little bit more? And my main question is, is can you put multiple space telescopes in the same Lagrange point? Yeah, it's sort of I mean, we've heard before, it's kind of a balance point, right, between the the gravitational interactions of the the sun and the Earth and the centrifugal forces of the, you know, objects in motion, the mass of objects in motion. So there's five Lagrange points. And this was sitting at one of those points. But to call it a point, it really is a little bit misleading in this context because you don't you don't put the spacecraft right at the point. One of the cool things about the Lagrange points, or at least some of the Lagrange points, is that even though there's nothing there, it's just a balance point. You can orbit them. You can put put an object, a small object there, you know, small relative to the Earth. And it will, it will, more or less stable the orbit at that point with only small adjustments necessary. So you actually have a lot of space to work with. So you can put a lot of things out there. They don't get in each other's way. Space is pretty big. I was, doing some digging because I was curious. And the idea of Lagrange point was first described in 1765 by a mathematician. And I just think it's fascinating that mathematicians can predict something like that, you know, what is it, you know, 240, 50 years in the past. And here we are able to, like, use it in the real world. I just think that's pretty neat. It is pretty amazing. And I mean, you know, it's I think probably grew out of this idea that, you know, with gravity, you have this, this three-body problem, right? I mean, how do you solve mathematically for the motion of three objects? And it turns out there's not a general solution for that. We can solve it on the computer, but you can't solve it with a pen and paper, the way that a mathematician would like to do. But there are restricted versions. Right. And this is a restricted version because the thing that you're sending up around the Lagrange points is much, much smaller, much, much less massive than the sun or the Earth. And so those it turns out, you can solve or approximately solve. And I think that's what what led to these, early mathematical description. Fascinating. So you mentioned that. So it's it's mirror is about the same size as Hubble, but we're hearing that it's going to be able to do like 100 times more than Hubble, describe, you know, or explain how they are managing to do that. We'll start with you, Doctor Basiji. And you can just chime in if you want to. Brendan. Yeah, please. I mean, so that's a there's three ways that this is kind of different from Hubble. Oh, maybe more than the three. But three come to mind immediately. And the first one is the the field of view. You know, how much of the sky can it look at at any given time? So, you know, Hubble has very high precision, has wonderful insights from work in a variety of wavelengths. But it's really looking at a tiny, tiny piece of the sky. It's like, imagine that you're, you know, you're looking at the sky through a straw. So you only see a small, small piece of the sky at once. And the optical design here for this tall scope is different. And so the telescope can see simultaneously a much larger patch of the sky. It's it's not still not huge. It's a quarter of a square degree, but that's 100 times more than than Hubble can see. So you're able to see this big chunk of relatively big chunk of the sky. Whereas Hubble only looked at this tiny little piece. But at the same time, the instrument still has the resolving power, the ability to separate objects on the sky and see fine detail. That's roughly equivalent to what Hubble can see. And so that's where this, you know, a hundred times more or more science or 100 time Something about, it's going to block the light of the sun. Can you explain what that means? Yeah. So it has it has two instruments on it, and one is a, one is an, an imaging instrument. Right. That takes pictures, that takes advantage of this huge field that it has, you know, the 100 times Hubble thing and that that works primarily in optical wavelengths, visible light, and then a little and into the infrared a ways. But it also has an instrument called a coronagraph, which is designed to look at, planets around other stars. And the problem with looking at planets around other stars, since the planets are not very bright compared to the stars that they orbit. And so if you go and try to just take a picture, the light from the star washes out the light of the planet. So the idea of a coronagraph, which was actually developed to look at the sun, is that it? It it has a piece in an apartment that blocks out the light of the star, leaving only the the light of the planet. And they're very tricky. You know, they're they're complicated to make. And there's a lot of technology that goes into this because you're trying to block out the light of the star without affecting the light from the planet. Anything you put in there tends to scatter light around. And so it's very hard to to get it so that it actually is doing what you want and not blocking other pieces of light out, or introducing light into other parts of the field that you're looking at. But this thing is pretty sophisticated, right? I mean, it's supposed to be able to block out our will, be able to block out about, all but about a billionth, of the light from the star. So we talk about chronographs in terms of their contrast. Right. What is the what is the contrast that you're able to achieve? How bright or how faint can the planet be and still be visible? And here it's about a part in a billion. So it can see a planet that's about a billion times fainter than the star. The other the other criterion is how close can it be? Because it doesn't help to block out the light from the star. If you block out all the you know, all the field near the star to where the planet would be, and in this case, it blocks out not only all, but one in part in a billionth of the light from the star, but also very, very close in, to the star. So you can see planets that are relatively close. Okay. Brendan, have you talked you mentioned having conversations with somebody who was in the clean room. Have you talked to anybody who's going to get to use it once it reaches its final destination, or do you think you will be doing that down the road? I'm talking to somebody right now who's going to be using it. Might you you can get access to data, that's coming down from room. And, the thing with Roman, is I had that same question when I talked to other scientists about how do you how do you get time on this? You know, if you want time on Hubble, one time on quest, you have to, put in a proposal and all that. There's going to be so much data coming back from from Roman, that it will be, accessible to the public almost immediately. NASA's developed an online platform to sift through all of this data. It's something like 1.4 foyer. Excuse me, 1.4TB of data per day, will be coming down. So not one particular scientist or one team of scientists is going to be able to comb through all of this data. So, for that reason, it's going to be, accessible by everyone. Now, you and I probably don't know what we're looking at. And Derek will probably get a much better use out of the data coming back, but. But the three of us could could certainly look at this data as it starts getting beamed back. You know, I don't want to, promote or detract from AI and large data sets, but it seems like the timing might be really good in terms of being able to sift through large, you know, bits of data or tranches of data from a telescope like this using generative AI. Do you either of you know, if th From some of the scientists that I've talked to, that is the plan, is to you're going to need to use AI to, to sift through all of this stuff. And, you know, much like a lot of, of kind of, you know, gathering of data, the tools that are available to go through this data and find, incredible findings may not even be invented yet. So all of this data will be out there and, you know, the AI model that that may be able to find dark matter or, you know, dark energy or something super fascinating may not even be invented just yet. So, it's really, really fascinating to see what is going to how how scientists, are going to be passing through this just massive, massive amounts of data that's coming back. I had one, one scientist tell me that, by the end of the five year cycle of of this, which is a very conservative life estimates, it's certainly expected, especially with, with how nominal launch went, that that Roman will last for more than than five years. But in that first five years, the data that is coming back, the size of that data is more than, let's say, a music library on a streaming platform. So there'll be more data than there is music on Spotify. So you are going to need to use, computer aided and artificial intelligence to sift through all of this stuff because there's just going to be so much stuff coming back. Doctor. Precisely. Is that all part of your workflow these days? Yeah. It is. I mean, you know, I think we're all using AI, machine learning, other, other computer tools for dealing with large volumes of data just because there's no way. I mean, you can't, you know, human beings can't keep up with that flow. You need something to help you. And that's the best tool for the job. So it's but, you know, it's a tool like any other tool, right? I mean, how how good it is and how well it works. And, and how effective it is, is really dependent to some extent on the user. I mean, it's true for any tool, right? I mean, I can I can give you an ax until you to go chop down a tree. But if you don't know how to use an ax, you're going to do a better job of it. And so, you know, with the AI tools and machine learning tools, again, you know, they're they're guided and used by people who know how to direct them and know what they're doing them. I think they can be extremely effective. Otherwise it becomes a little more difficult. Will you be doing any science with the data from the new telescope once it starts? Yeah, I'm. Certainly planning on it. I'm certainly planning on it. I mean, another another difference in the way that, the this telescope operates. And this is also a trend that you're seeing in astronomy and not just with the rolling space telescope. Is that a lot of the data? A lot of the times the telescope is going to spend observing is going to be spent doing surveys. So it's something like 75% of the time, at least in the first few years, it's going to be doing surveys. And these are to serve the community. So they're looking at particular pieces of the sky and in particular ways with particular cadences, and set filter sets and things like that. And that data comes back in anyone, you know, as we, as we heard, I mean, anyone can use that data and play with it. And so certainly I have science that I want to do, with that data when it comes back. Does it become part of, the instructional process at a place like University of Chicago? Seems like that'd be a great project or something. Sure. I mean, it will, became part of that process, you know, immediately. You know, it was I was showing that data to students and talking about it, from as soon as I got here, basically. And so I certainly expect that to be the case with Roman as well. I mean, I in classes that I'm teaching now, I do show, you know, obviously I'm not showing Roman data because we don't have it yet, but I'm showing models of Roman data. You know, this is what we kind of expect to see. And this is what Roman will be capable of. Brandon, I think I said in the intro, it takes about three months for it to get there. Will you be, I guess both of you will be waiting for. Because you got to turn it on. It's got to start, you know, is that going to be like an edge of your seat kind of thing for astronomers and people like yourself? Brandon? Yeah. I'm very excited to see what. What, data is coming back. You know, I, we heard that just after launch that it was a nominal launch. Nominal check out. So far, everything is going going as planned. And the scientists expect us to get some data back by the end of the year, even before the holiday. So, Yeah, I'll be very excited. I'm not going. I don't know what I'm looking at, so I'm going to have to call, you know, scientists like, like Derek or the folks that have been on my show to, to talk about those, those first findings. But I'm very excited to hear what what is in that first data dump that it gives us. Doctor, is it correct me if I'm wrong, but when they sent Hubble up, wasn't there something wrong with the mirror? And they had to go fix it? Right. So, yeah, the the, the secondary was ground or the primary, it was ground to shifted in slightly the wrong way. And so they, they had to fix it. And it took a while for them to get up to it and understand what was going on and build a replacement or, corrective optics and send all that up. You know, I'm hoping that's not going to happen here. It's very unlikely, I think, to happen here. It would be harder in any event, because being at L2, it's less accessible. Right? It's not in low-Earth orbit. It's harder to get to but it was designed, you know, to be serviced, even though at this point we don't have a way of servicing it. So potentially, you know, at some point in the future, we could we could see people going up and servicing it or robots going up and servicing them. I wasn't sure if it was so far out there. It was not serviceable, but I guess it still is. Well, we're unfortunately out of time, gentlemen, we can go a lot further into this. We didn't even hardly at all get to get into dark matter and dark energy. We'll have to do another show on that. Doctor Derek Buzasi is an astronomer and senior instructional professor and co-director of undergraduate studies at University of Chicago. Thank you so much, doctor Buzasi. Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me on. It's fun to be back with you. And Brendan Byrne is assistant news director at Central Florida Public Media, and he's host of Are We There Yet? Heard on public radio stations including WGCU on Saturday night at 730. It's also available as a podcast. Always fun having you on the show. Brendan. Great to be here. And actually I'm going to I'm going to call you once that data comes in. So you can come on the show and tell me what we're looking at. I'm sure happy to talk with you, Brendan. The that's how it works. You can find links to information about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and to the work both of them do on our website, WGCU.ORG/GCL Our show today was produced by yours truly with audio production and video production by Matt Krause Thanks for listening. I’m Mike Kiniry, this is WGCU FM Fort Myers 90.1 WMKO, Marco Island 91.7 FM. We are NPR for Southwest Florida.