Roman Space Telescope to Probe Milky Way’s Core for Thousands of New Worlds
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy will launch NASA’s Roman Space Telescope, which will devote more than a quarter of its five-year mission to a deep survey of the Galactic bulge, searching for exoplanets through microlensing and transit techniques.
NASA’s Roman Space Telescope is set to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center, beginning a five-year primary mission that allocates more than 25% of its observing time to the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey. The telescope will repeatedly image a sky area roughly eight full moons across, peering through the dense stellar field toward the opposite side of the galaxy. By tracking hundreds of millions of stars, Roman will capture fleeting microlensing events—brief brightening caused by foreground objects that can betray the presence of Earth-sized planets—as well as periodic transits that allow repeated study of exoplanetary systems.
Researchers anticipate the survey could identify around 100,000 new planets, including bodies as small as the Moon, and also catalog numerous brown dwarfs, black holes, neutron stars and other astrophysical phenomena. The mission includes a state-of-the-art coronagraph capable of imaging Jupiter-sized planets around nearby stars. Full scientific operations are targeted for January 2027, after a commissioning phase, promising a wealth of data to refine our understanding of planetary demographics and the age distribution of stars in the Milky Way’s bulge.
Why it matters
The mission will vastly expand knowledge of how common Earth-like planets are and reveal the composition of our galaxy’s central region.
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