SpaceX confirms that liquid oxygen, or LOX, loading is now underway for Falcon Heavy’s second stage. All the major propulsion elements of the rocket carrying NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope spacecraft are now in propellant-loading operations at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

When NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope reaches its final orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2), it will join NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in observing the universe from about a million miles from Earth.

Roman and Webb view the universe in different but complementary ways, like wide-angle and zoom lenses. Roman surveys enormous areas of the sky in a single shot, ideal for surveys, mapping the Milky Way, exploring billions of stars, and finding transient events.

Webb uses its narrower view but more powerful vision to follow up on those uncommon objects for even more detailed observations while Roman can offer context. Together, the two observatories will reveal extraordinary new information about our universe such as primordial galaxies — the earliest and most ancient galaxies — black holes, and planets beyond our solar system

Roman also builds off of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope legacy. Roman uses a primary mirror similar in size to Hubble’s. Over the first five years of observations, Roman will image more than 50 times as much sky as Hubble has covered in 30 years.Hubble images a narrow view while Roman is wide view. Roman’s images will have the same crisp infrared resolution as Hubble’s, but each one will capture a patch of the sky at least 100 times larger.

Hubble could follow up on interesting targets within Roman’s panoramas using infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light, providing a more comprehensive view of individual objects and conducting studies that only Hubble can currently do.

Hubble is considered the detail expert, Webb is the deep infrared specialist, and Roman is the wide-area survey machine. Together they cover a more complete spectrum of cosmic exploration needs.

To learn more about Roman and its mission:
nasa.gov/roman

Source: NASA