By Mikayla Mace Kelley, University Communications - August 27, 2026
It is T-minus 4 days until lift off for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA's next flagship astrophysics mission after the James Webb Space Telescope. Several University of Arizona faculty and students will be watching the launch from Cape Canaveral in anticipation of the start of science activities, slated to begin in January 2027.
Watch the launch live Sunday morning at 7:26 am EDT/4:26 am MST on NASA Live.
While Webb was designed to see far, Roman will see wide, conducting rapid surveys of huge swaths of night sky. Both telescopes, however, can collect infrared light, allowing astronomers to cross reference their data. These flagship telescopes, working alongside each other, will reveal more about the universe than either alone.
Roman's primary mirror, at 7.9-feet across, is the same size as Hubble Space Telescope's and carries two instruments. The Coronagraph Instrument will reveal exoplanets and disks around other stars by blocking and filtering starlight. The Wide Field Instrument was made to be as sensitive as Hubble's cameras but will image an area 100 times larger. While Hubble has observed roughly 0.1% of the night sky over its 30-year mission, Roman has the potential to cover the entire sky at the same resolution.
Roman will detect rare objects both near and far, and capture images of dying stars, new worlds, galaxy clusters and more. The U of A will play various roles in Roman Telescope science.
New techniques in cosmology
One of Roman's central objectives is to probe cosmological mysteries related to dark matter and dark energy, enigmatic influences that make up nearly all the universe. Dark matter is a substance with gravitational influence but doesn't emit light. Dark energy, somehow, drives the accelerated expansion of the universe.
NASA selected the U of A's Arizona Cosmology Lab to support two investigations into the properties and mechanics of these mysteries – one in the wide-field science team and one in project infrastructure team category.
Elisabeth Krause, professor of astronomy and physics, leads the wide-field science team "Kinematic Lensing with the Roman Space Telescope," which was awarded $2 million to develop a new type of cosmological measurement called kinematic lensing. By combining images with spectroscopic data, the team will study dark matter and dark energy with more precision than ever before.
The U of A-based group of the project infrastructure team "Maximizing Cosmological Science with the Roman High Latitude Imaging Survey" will play a leading role within a multi-institutional effort. Tim Eifler, professor of astronomy and physics, is leading the working group that will interpret the cosmological data.
Astronomers will use the Roman Telescope to detect galaxies near and far, pinpoint their location and measure their particular characteristics to create a catalog. Then, they'll run models based on the catalog to help them understand the underlying physical properties of the universe.
In order to perform the complex calculations that underpin these physical models, the NASA Roman Project awarded Eifler's lab $800,000 to buy computing resources that will be part of a new university-wide high-performance computing system slated to arrive this fall and an additional $2.4 million over five years to do the science.
"This infrastructure will take us from catalogs to cosmological interpretation." Eifler said. "We'll be able to do things like determine how much dark energy and dark matter are in the universe."
Eifler is also the co-chair of the cosmology group, a collection of over 1,000 scientists from around the world.
"It's fantastic to rally the community and to organize us around this science case," he said. "This really is a dream job."
Planetary pursuit
Roman's Coronagraphic Instrument will wield a collection of masks, prisms, detectors, filters and self-flexing mirrors to demonstrate new technologies for blocking the light of other stars and directly imaging the planets and disks that surround them.
Being able to directly image planets is a gamechanger. Nearly all exoplanets have been found using indirect methods, such as measuring the dip in starlight when a planet passes in front of it. But blocking glare allows scientists to discover more elusive planets than before. In fact, the instrument will be able to see planets 100 million times fainter than their stars – 100 to 1,000 times better than existing space-based coronagraphs.
"It will be a crucial pathfinder for a future Habitable Worlds Observatory," a recommended telescope that would be specifically designed to search for signs of life in other solar systems, said Schuyler Wolff, an associate research professor of astronomy leading the observation planning working group for the Coronagraph Instrument.
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory director Mark Marley, associate professor of astronomy Ewan S. Douglas, Steward Observatory assistant research professor Ramya Anche, and astronomy postdoctoral research associate Justin Hom all also played roles in developing this instrument and will conduct future science as part of the observation planning working group.
Marley, along with LPL associate professor Ty Robinson and LPL postdoctoral research associate Zarah Brown, will use data from the Coronagraph Instrument to understand atmospheres the of other worlds.
Brown has been modeling the climate and spectra of self-luminous giant planets, which are typically so young and hot that they emit thermal infrared light. The model predicts not just the atmosphere's temperature, composition and clouds, but the spectrum of infrared light the object should give off; a prediction the team needs because most of these objects have never been observed at these wavelengths before.
"That predicted spectrum is critical for planning," Brown said. "Roman's coronagraph is working with extremely faint, high-contrast targets, so the team has to schedule enough observing time to detect a candidate without burning more of the mission's limited time than necessary."
Anche's team is studying the structure of extrasolar-systems, and Hom is leading efforts to select the best stars to calibrate the Coronagraph Instrument. Hom also leads the precursor observation programs using ground-based telescopes, critical for validating target selection for future science programs.
The start of science
Once science operations begin in January, data will be made available to the science community. The U of A will lead nine NASA-approved investigations using this data that will bring in more than $2 million. Our researchers will probe additional subjects such as supermassive black holes, gravitational lenses, galaxy formation, reionization and cosmic dust.
UA News - U of A Scientists Play Crucial Roles in Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Science