NASA's future telescope will help better understand dark matter and galaxy formation

NASA's next-generation observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will help astronomers untangle some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos - how galaxies grow and the nature of dark matter - an invisible matter that can only be detected via its gravitational effects on visible objects - among others.

Scheduled to launch in 2027, Roman will study wispy streams of stars that extend far beyond the apparent edges of many galaxies. According to NASA, stellar streams look like ethereal strands of hair extending outward from some galaxies, peacefully drifting through space as part of the halo – a spherical region surrounding a galaxy.

While current observatories lack the power to see faint individual stars in and around galaxies, Roman will be able to image individual stars in nearby galaxies with great precision. The next-gen telescope could improve on these observations by resolving individual stars to understand each stream's stellar populations and see stellar streams of various sizes in even more galaxies, according to NASA.

Roman may detect them in several of our neighbouring galaxies for the first time ever. The mission's wide, sharp, deep vision should even reveal individual stars in these enormous, dim structures, the agency said.

Just around the cosmic riverbend 🎶Stellar streams are long trails of stars from dwarf galaxies or star clusters that are being pulled in by a galaxy’s gravity. @NASARoman will study these streams to better understand dark matter and galactic growth: https://t.co/gvMwsyKcSz

— NASA Goddard (@NASAGoddard) June 22, 2022

With a view 100 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope, Roman will generate never-before-seen big pictures of the universe to help astronomers explore some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos. It will have two instruments, the Wide Field Instrument to measure light from a billion galaxies, and the Coronagraph Instrument to perform high contrast imaging and spectroscopy of individual nearby exoplanets (planets beyond our solar system).