Built in Greenbelt, NASA’s Roman Space Telescope prepares to map the universe

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Inside clean rooms at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, engineers have finished building and testing a massive new space telescope designed to study the universe on an unprecedented scale.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, is now complete after more than a decade of development.

“It is a lot of work, millions of hours is no exaggeration. That’s actual, actual math,” Jamie Dunn, project manager for the telescope, said.

Standing just over 40 feet tall and wrapped in purple, silver and blush-colored thermal covering, the telescope is designed to take an unusually wide view of the universe. Scientists said that approach will help them better understand dark energy and dark matter while also discovering tens of thousands of planets beyond the solar system.

“One month of Roman observations would correspond to a century with Hubble,” said Julie McEnery, senior project scientist for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched back in 1990 and remains fully operational.

McEnery said Roman’s sweeping surveys could also help scientists identify flaws in long-standing theories about how the universe works.