NASA is set to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at the end of August. The telescope’s primary mission is to help us better understand the universe, from dark matter to dark energy. However, it can also serve another purpose: defending Earth from killer asteroids.
Telescope Capabilities
Roman is equipped with a super-wide-angle, 300-megapixel infrared camera, allowing it to see a large patch of space at any one time—roughly 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope. This will enable it to discover thousands of new planets, tens of thousands of exploding stars, and survey over one billion galaxies in remarkable detail.
The telescope’s epic field-of-view and infrared vision allow it to spot small asteroids up to 60 feet long, comparable to the asteroid that exploded above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013. Roman’s software will need some tweaking to spy space rocks, as it is designed to gather the clearest possible pictures of the universe.
Asteroid Detection
According to the report, Roman won’t be an asteroid-finding expert on its own, but its strength lies in complementing the James Webb Space Telescope. Roman can provide infrared observations of more asteroids than the James Webb Space Telescope could hope to observe in a reasonable amount of observing time. If those asteroids are found to be benign travelers, we can relax, but if they might collide with Earth, other telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope, can follow up from Roman’s observations.
Astronomers estimate that there are around 25,000 asteroids 460 feet long and larger with near-Earth orbits, and just over half have yet to be found. Roman’s infrared scope allows it to offer a decent estimate of an asteroid’s size and can even tell whether it’s a stony rock, a puffy and watery carbon-rich rock, or a metallic one.
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Telescope Teamwork
NASA’s launching the Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope in 2027, which will find many elusive asteroids that ground-based telescopes cannot see. The Near-Earth Object Surveyor will work with other telescopes, including Roman, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Vera Rubin Observatory, to discover near-Earth asteroids. Roman, with its huge field-of-view, could be commanded to look at the corner of the night sky that includes multiple asteroids, and in a matter of days, it could improve the precision of those orbits by several orders of magnitude.
Roman’s infrared scope also allows it to offer strong clues to the composition and thereby the density and mass of the asteroid, which are important when estimating the impact damage or the effort required to nudge it out of its current orbit. While Roman won’t play the lead role in protecting Earth, it will do its part to protect us from a cosmic catastrophe.
As near-Earth objects continue to pose a threat, the collaboration between these telescopes will be essential in detecting and tracking potentially hazardous asteroids. Roman’s unique capabilities will make it a vital tool in the quest to understand and protect our planet, and learning more about geothermal plants can also provide insights into the Earth’s internal heat.
They will work together to defend Earth.
Roman’s launch is scheduled for the end of August.
