How do scientists studying space with data from a telescope hundreds of thousands of miles away know that what they are seeing is real? A new NASA project, Artifact InSPECtor, invites you to find out – and by doing so, to help missions like Euclid and NASA’s new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope answer fundamental questions about our universe.
“It’s really cool that we can help teach computers new skills,” said nine-year-old Maeve F. after trying out Artifact InSPECtor. Participants of all ages, including those as young as Maeve, can visit the project to learn how they can contribute to science by training artificial intelligence to remove errors in telescope data.
Here’s how it works.
The Euclid space telescope, a powerful observatory built by ESA (European Space Agency) with critical contributions from NASA, is collecting light from millions of distant galaxies across the universe. It will soon be joined by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a complementary observatory that will capture a similar number of galaxies after it begins science operations, but at different distances and densities across the sky. Together, these telescopes promise to help scientists answer questions about the expansion of the universe and dark energy – the mysterious force causing this expansion.
To collect data to answer these questions, each telescope uses a special instrument called a spectrograph that works like a prism: it splits the light from each galaxy, even very distant ones, into a rainbow of colors. By studying these rainbow patterns, called spectra, scientists can figure out how far away each galaxy is, what kinds of stars it contains, and even information about the supermassive black holes at their centers.
But before that can happen, there’s a problem to solve.
Telescope data contains many “artifacts” – the general name scientists use for signals that come from things other than real astronomical objects like galaxies or stars. Artifacts can be created by light glinting off the telescope’s housing, cosmic rays striking the detector, quirks in the camera or electronics, or other sources. It’s a bit like when a smudge on your phone’s camera lens shows up in a photo, or when a glare from the Sun blocks part of your picture.
To find and remove these artifacts, astronomers have created artificial intelligence (AI) tools that learn to recognize them, similar to how your phone recognizes faces in photos. But recognizing artifacts in data from relatively new instruments is challenging work for the AI, which doesn’t always distinguish them accurately
That’s where you come in! As a volunteer with Artifact InSPECtor, you’ll look at real space telescope data from Euclid and, starting in early 2027, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The project will teach you how to recognize artifacts in data from these telescopes. The work you do will then be used to improve the instructions guiding the AI tool. Working together, you, the AI, the scientists, and these powerful space telescopes will learn more than ever before about how our universe works.
If you want to teach computers new skills and help discover the mysteries of dark energy, use your smartphone, tablet, or computer to visit Artifact InSPECtor and begin today: https://go.nasa.gov/3Uyrguy.
Examples of what artifacts can look like in space telescope data. The blue areas indicate pixels that the AI model thinks are invalid. Artifact InSPECtor volunteers will learn how to verify whether the machine got it right.
Credit: Image data from the ESA/Euclid Q1 Data release. Image processing by Aimee Schechter and Bharath C. Nagam.
Learn More and Get Involved
Artifact InSPECtor
Train the tools used to remove artifacts from the data collected by space telescopes. For anyone with a smartphone or laptop.
NASA’s Hubble, Webb Find Far-out Solar System Objects ‘Remember’ Past
This artist’s concept depicts a Trans-Neptunian Object, a small, faint, icy body orbiting the Sun beyond the orbit of Neptune. These objects are so small that even with NASA’s Hubble and Webb space telescopes, they appear only as tiny points of light.
Artwork: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI)
For the first time, scientists used the joint power of NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes to study some of the most far-flung bodies in our solar system, Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). Some of these are the smallest and faintest ever directly seen. The researchers unexpectedly found fewer small TNOs than they expected, and that the colors of these bodies followed the same relationships as their larger family members.
These objects are typically small, faint, icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond the orbit of Neptune. Most are more than 100 million times dimmer than objects visible to the unaided eye. In two complementary papers published Tuesday in The Astronomical Journal, teams analyzed the color, composition, and size distribution of 27 newly discovered tiny, dim TNOs.
This class of small bodies offers the best view into an early stage of planet-building, when a disk of dust and pebbles in orbit around the Sun coalesced into city-sized “planetesimals” — the solid building blocks that clump together to form planets — but had not yet merged into full-sized worlds. Beyond Neptune, this second stage never happened, leaving behind a frozen population of planetesimals.
In the deepest TNO survey to date, teams led by PhD candidates from the University of Victoria in Canada, under the guidance of the National Research Council of Canada, and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff examined a patch of sky simultaneously with Hubble, observing the TNOs’ visible light, and Webb, observing their infrared light. The team of researchers measured the objects’ colors, which are like a fingerprint of the surface composition, as well as their sizes and determined their orbits.
In the coordinated observations, the teams studied two different types of TNOs. The first, dynamically “cold” TNOs, are on their original, relatively circular orbits around the Sun in the plane of the solar system. The second type, dynamically “hot” TNOs, formed between the current locations of Uranus and Neptune but were pushed outward where they are today when the outer gas giants migrated early in the solar system’s history. Today they reside in highly elliptical orbits and move in and out of the plane of our solar system.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; Lead Producer: Paul Morris
Prior to these observations, astronomers thought that small TNOs from both hot and cold populations would have undergone many collisions, changing their surfaces compared to larger TNOs. But that’s not what the observations showed. Instead, the small bodies look like their larger counterparts. This implies that collisions are not changing the surfaces significantly—perhaps because there are fewer collisions than expected, or because the TNOs somehow retain their primordial, pre-collision compositions. The teams are still trying to unravel this mystery.
“You could imagine a scenario where getting knocked around and fragmented would change the surface composition, and then you would see a different surface color for tiny TNOs compared to their larger siblings. So it’s really fascinating to see that the smallest objects are somehow ‘remembering’ and preserving the history of how they were made,” said Northern Arizona University PhD candidate Anastasia Morgan, who led the study of color and composition.
“These dynamically ‘hot’ TNOs retain a signature of where they were born, even though they’ve been orbitally scrambled since then,” said co-author David Trilling of Northern Arizona University.
Both the “hot” and “cold” populations seem to keep the same colors as when they were formed, with little change since the birth of the solar system.
The Webb data also allowed researchers to measure the number of objects of each size. They found that the overall size distributions for both populations were surprisingly similar.
“It’s very interesting that the process of planetesimal formation ends up producing the same distribution of sizes for both cold and hot populations, despite forming in different regions of the early solar system. The process seems to be insensitive to disk conditions, producing similar planetesimal sizes whether the disk is hot or cold, and dense or fluffy,” said University of Victoria PhD candidate Marielle Eduardo, who led the study on size distribution.
Researchers also found fewer of these very small bodies than they expected based on some planet formation models. Webb discovered 27 new, remarkably dim TNOs, one so faint it is equivalent to standing on Earth and seeing a small swarm of fireflies on the Moon. The smallest one they observed has a diameter of about 3 miles (5 kilometers), which is about five times smaller than what is possible to detect with the most sensitive ground-based telescopes.
This project would not have been possible without Hubble and Webb working together to detect and characterize these TNOs. With Hubble’s sensitivity in visible light and Webb’s in infrared, the space telescopes provide more insights than either can on its own.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
This artist’s concept depicts a Trans-Neptunian Object, a small, faint, icy body orbiting the Sun beyond the orbit of Neptune. These objects are so small that even with NASA’s Hubble and Webb space telescopes, they appear only as tiny points of light.
Tiny Worlds Discovered by Hubble and Webb
This video explains how Hubble and Webb are giving scientists a new look at some of the solar system’s oldest survivors and revealing new clues about how the building blocks of planets, including Earth, first formed.
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NASA’s Hubble Finds Kuiper Belt Duo May Be Trio
A team of researchers found a potential three-body system in the Kuiper Belt. The system, known as the Altjira, challenges traditional collision theories by suggesting that these triple systems might form directly from the gravitational collapse of material in the early solar disk.
NASA’s Webb Reveals the Ancient Surfaces of Trans-Neptunian Objects
Within the first two years of science operations, Webb took high-quality spectra of over 75 TNOs and provided the first comprehensive look at what they are made of.
Uncovering Icy Objects in the Kuiper Belt
Hubble observations of the outskirts of our solar system found a moon orbiting Makemake and several new moons around Pluto. These observations played a critical role in helping NASA plan the New Horizons spacecraft’s flyby of Pluto and beyond.
Hubble Harvests Distant Solar System Objects
Astronomers using clever techniques to cull the data archives of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have added 14 new TNOs to the catalog.
Kuiper Belt: Exploration
The Kuiper Belt is a doughnut-shaped region of icy objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is home to Pluto and most of the known dwarf planets and some comets.
This Hubble Space Telescope image features the picturesque nebula LHA 120-N44, or N44.
NASA, ESA/Hubble, D. Gouliermis
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a sprawling cosmic vista in the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, the largest of the small galaxies that orbit our Milky Way galaxy. At just 160,000 light-years away, the LMC offers a close look at highly active star birth sites like the one in this image. This photogenic nebula, named LHA 120-N44, or N44, is in the constellation Dorado.
N44 is dominated by two features: a vast central void and a shell of dense, dusty gas. The central void is a ‘superbubble’ spanning roughly 210 by 140 light-years across. The glittering stars at the center of the void are responsible for its creation; through their powerful stellar winds and explosive supernovae, these stars expelled much of the gas from which they were born.
When the stars of N44’s central star cluster swept away this gas, the expelled gas compressed and formed a shell around the superbubble. New stars are forming in this compressed gas shell, making N44 an interesting target for astronomers who are using the nebula to study how stars form in this environment. Their goal is to understand how long it takes from the collapse of cold gas clouds into dense knots to the moment nuclear fusion ignites in the heart of a newborn star.
The data in this image is from an observing program (#14689; PI: Gouliermis) that used Hubble to survey N44 and take a census of its stars, cataloging nearly half a million stars within the cluster as well as interlopers drifting in front of it. Of the stars surveyed, nearly 30,000 are what astronomers call pre-main-sequence stars, which have yet to begin fusing hydrogen into helium in their cores. Astronomers discovered this treasure trove of baby stars thanks to the high sensitivity and fine spatial resolution of Hubble’s instruments that can pick out faint objects in crowded clusters.
The gas shell surrounding the superbubble is energized by ultraviolet radiation from massive stars, causing it to glow and highlighting several distinct features. Each feature within the broader N44 star-forming complex was cataloged by astronomer Karl Henize in the 1950s. One feature is a smaller bubble, cataloged as N44F, that is located near the upper-right corner of this image. N44F is an interstellar bubble blown by the intense stellar winds of a single hot and massive star. As this previously released Hubble closeup shows, the star’s furious winds and radiation have sculpted the surrounding bubble and created pillars of dusty gas.
Hubble’s sensitive observations of the lowest-mass stars in this region open a new window onto star formation in regions that, like the LMC or the galaxies in the early universe, are poor in elements heavier than helium.
In this YouTube video, Dr. Ken Carpenter takes us on a journey through the Nebula, teaching us some of the interesting science behind this famous Hubble image.
Hubble Views N44 Superbubble
N44 is a complex nebula filled with glowing hydrogen gas, dark lanes of dust, massive stars, and many populations of stars of different ages. One of its most distinctive features, however, is the dark, starry gap called a “superbubble,” visible in this Hubble image in the upper central region.
Large N44 Mosaic Image
Download various sizes of Hubble’s large N44 mosaic, including a high resolution, 14,478 x 19,908 pixel (1.6 GB) image
NASA’s Hubble Tracks New Decagon Encircling Saturn’s South Pole
Recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope images show the gas giant Saturn and its southern pole, where astronomers have discovered a 10-sided atmospheric wave. Observations show the decagon extends through multiple layers of Saturn’s atmosphere.
Image: NASA, ESA, STScI, Agustin Sánchez-Lavega (UPV), Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan
Recent observations with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have revealed a giant, evolving, 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn’s south pole. This discovery marks the first time a large, regular-sided jet pattern has been observed in the planet’s southern hemisphere. The feature appears remarkably similar to Saturn’s famous hexagon at its northern pole, but is also distinctly different, suggesting scientists may be witnessing a new atmospheric phenomenon develop on the iconic gas giant.
The results published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
By piecing together several years of Hubble observations dating back to 2023, researchers found subtle hints of the structure beginning to emerge before it became a clearly defined pattern. Those observations were taken as part of Hubble’s Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, which has photographed the outer planets annually for more than a decade.
“We’ve never seen anything quite like this in Saturn’s southern hemisphere,” said Amy Simon, study co-author and OPAL principal investigator, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The northern hexagon has been there every time we’ve looked for more than 40 years. This feature is different — it appears to be strengthening, giving us the rare opportunity to watch a giant atmospheric pattern develop.”
The discovery was possible because Saturn’s changing seasons gradually brought the planet’s south pole back into view from Earth, where astronomers who collectively analyze images of Saturn from ground-based observatories first identified it.
Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, lead author of the new study, is a researcher at the University of the Basque Country in Spain. The university manages a website, called Planetary Virtual Observatory Laboratory, that accepts ground-based images of solar system planets contributed by observers all over the world. It was in those images, first in 2024, that Sánchez-Lavega and amateur astronomers Trevor Barry and Jean-Paul Oger noticed a subtle undulating band along the southern pole. Additional 2025 imagery taken from the ground hinted even more strongly toward this decagon structure.
That’s when the Hubble observations come into the picture. Hubble’s view from space offers unmatched image sharpness and spatial resolution over full rotations of Saturn, without smearing by Earth’s atmosphere.
“Given Saturn’s symmetry in its north-south jet stream system, we have been searching for a counterpart to Saturn’s northern hexagon on the south pole in Hubble images since 1990,” Sánchez-Lavega said. “Images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn between 2004 and 2017, showed no inkling of a long-lived formation, either. The Hubble data confirmed the feature’s presence back to 2023.”
A single filter from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope distinctly shows a 10-sided wave encircling Saturn’s south pole, labeled “decagon”. An “X” denotes where data was not captured.
Image: NASA, ESA, STScI, Agustin Sánchez-Lavega (UPV), Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan
The wave sits within one of Saturn’s powerful jet streams and extends through multiple layers of the atmosphere, indicating it is not just a cloud-level feature, but a vertically extended atmospheric structure. The decagon’s apparent position shifts slightly, because Hubble captures images from different wavelengths. Those different wavelengths probe different altitudes in Saturn’s atmosphere.
“The most intriguing part to me is that this seems to have just formed recently,” said Simon. “The question is, why did it suddenly form now when we haven’t seen one before?”
The authors say further study is needed from Hubble and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, as well as analysis of computer models, to understand how the decagon formed, how long it may last, and how it compares to the long-lived hexagon in the north.
Hubble’s long duration in operation has allowed astronomers to track changes over time in solar system planets and other astronomical objects as well.
Rather than providing a single snapshot, the OPAL program allows scientists to follow seasonal changes, track short-lived storms, and identify other atmospheric features that evolve slowly over time.
“When we started the OPAL program, we expected compelling surprises, but we didn’t know what to expect specifically,” said Mike Wong, study co-author, University of California, Berkeley. “A lot of the discoveries we see coming from OPAL are not just based on one observation, but on years and years of data. Regular observations over time are enabling a lot of new findings.”
The team plans to continue observing Saturn to determine whether the decagon settles into a long-lived, stable configuration like the northern hexagon or continues to evolve. Future observations also could help scientists determine what drives the wave, what it reveals about the atmospheric dynamics of giant planets throughout the solar system, and how they may relate to those we see here on Earth.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for more than three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
Recent NASA Hubble Space Telescope images show the gas giant Saturn and its southern pole, where astronomers have discovered a 10-sided atmospheric wave. Observations show the decagon extends through multiple layers of Saturn’s atmosphere.
Decagon on Saturn’s South Pole (Single Filter)
A single filter from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope distinctly shows a 10-sided wave encircling Saturn’s south pole, labeled “decagon”. An “X” denotes where data was not captured.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, transits the Sun during launch from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Aug. 30, 2026. Roman is named after the agency’s first chief astronomer.
Roman will survey billions of stars and galaxies with a field of view far larger than Hubble’s, helping scientists study dark energy, exoplanets, and the evolution of the universe.
NASA's $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, equipped with a 300-megapixel camera sighted through a refurbished spy mirror, launched Sunday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a mission to reveal the mysterious forces driving the Universe.
The new mission will extend the vision of NASA's other famous observatories, providing a field of view 100 times wider than the Hubble Space Telescope and complementing the groundbreaking work of the James Webb Space Telescope. Roman is just the second NASA-led astrophysics mission to launch this century, following the launch of Webb in 2021.
Unlike Webb, which suffered many years of delays before reaching space, Roman arrived at the launch pad nine months before NASA's commitment to send it skyward by May 2027.
Beauty pass of Roman, coming around from behind with high-gain antenna rotating.
Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab
Where is Roman?
Roman is making its three-month journey from Earth to Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, or L2. Along the way, Roman is undergoing a process called commissioning, where systems are turned on, adjusted, calibrated, and prepared for science operations. Commissioning is the time for scientists and engineers to make sure that Roman is performing as expected. The schedule is subject to change as the team assesses and adjusts as needed.
An hour and 23 minutes after launch, Roman began to emerge from the tight configuration that allowed it to fit in the rocket fairing. The solar panels and sunshade deployed, shading the rest of the observatory and providing power to the systems. Within the upcoming days, the antenna will swing out and the visor-like deployable aperture cover will move into place to permanently reveal and shade the primary mirror.
Roman’s Orbit
This visualization shows the stable, halo orbit that Roman will have around L2. At this location, the gravity of the Sun and Earth, together with an object’s motion around the Sun, let it stay lined up with Earth as they orbit, allowing Roman to have a relatively steady orbit without using much fuel. This location also offers exceptionally stable optical performance and a constant, unobstructed view of a wide swath of the sky; Earth won’t block much of Roman’s view since it will be so distant. And at L2, heat from Earth, the Sun, and the Moon have less effect on infrared telescopes, which “see” heat.
Explore the Roman Systems
Learn more about the systems that are getting turned on, tested and calibrated.
While the sound and fury of launch is exciting, it’s just the beginning of the journey for Roman. It will take several months for the spacecraft to complete its roughly 1.5 million-kilometer trek out to Earth’s second Lagrange point (L2), where it will set up shop near — in cosmic terms, anyway — the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Along the way, it will switch on and test various systems and components, with its primary 300 megapixel infrared camera scheduled to power up in three weeks or so.
There’s a lot to cover about the Roman Space Telescope. Built from spy satellite spare parts donated by the National Reconnaissance Office and featuring a field of view 100 times greater than that of Hubble, its launch is widely considered to be one of the most important scientific milestones of the decade. We’ll be bringing you more about the past, present, and future of this flagship mission as it progresses.
From real space missions to virtual ones, this week the developers of EVE Online announced that 2.4 million lines of code that keep the massively multiplayer online role-playing game running would finally be making the switch to Python 3. Given the immense complexity of the codebase, it’s been stuck at Python 2.7 since their last overhaul back in 2010, a situation which has become increasingly difficult to manage as time goes on.
The announcement goes into a surprising amount of depth about the state of Python in EVE. We imagine most players couldn’t care less, but naturally the developers have strong feelings about the situation and perhaps thought it would benefit others in a similar situation to get their thoughts out there.
While there’s certainly an argument to be made that the only justification they really need for making the migration is that 2.7 hit end-of-life back in 2020, the developers explain that the more immediate problem for them was that various tools and libraries they wanted to use were no longer compatible with the Python 2.x series. They also point out hopes that speed improvements made in the latest version of Python will eventually translate into better game performance down the road.
In more terrestrial news, this week the necessary regulatory amendments were passed to make plug-in solar systems legal in the United Kingdom. Assuming the wiring meets the necessary requirements, consumers can pick up the hardware and install it themselves without involving an electrician, although they may still need to contend with landlords and local ordinances that may limit their ability to physically mount the panels. The rules as they stand now allow each residence to have four panels with a total combined output rating of no more than 2,000 watts, although critically, the system is only allowed to generate a maximum of 800 watts at the inverter. As the government and consumers get more comfortable with plug-in solar systems, these numbers will likely increase over time.
Solar isn’t the only area where DIY approaches are moving into the mainstream. This week, Citrix pitched a “different approach to endpoint resiliency”: an isolated Linux-based operating system called UniconOS that users can boot into should the computer’s primary Windows installation become compromised or otherwise inoperable. The idea is that an independent, read-only backup OS kept on its own partition will reduce downtime, since the computer can still be used while IT figures out what the hell happened.
This solution will sound suspiciously familiar to anyone who’s booted a live Linux system from CD/DVD/USB in the last few decades. Try not to keep yourself up all night wondering why you never pitched the idea to some hungry venture capitalists in exchange for a yacht in the Bahamas.
Finally, on the theme of new technology embracing the old ways, we bring you Defrag98, a web reincarnation of Microsoft’s dial-up era Disk Defragmenter tool. While it won’t actually improve the performance of your modern solid-state drive, you may find your own mood boosted by the wave of nostalgia when you see — and hear — the classic tool go to work.
That’s right, not only do the blocks dutifully flip from red to blue just like you remember, but all the while you’ll be treated to the unmistakable whirs and clicks of a spinning hard drive circa the turn of the millennium. Never forget what they took from us.
See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line; we’d love to hear about it.
A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope on board is seen transiting the sun during launch from Launch Complex 39A, Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA/John Kraus
Now on a three-month, million-mile journey to its final orbit, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon reveal the universe’s darkest secrets. The mission launched at 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Roman pairs a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to explore vast swaths of the sky and probe deeply into cosmic history. This flagship mission will help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, and worlds outside of our solar system, known as exoplanets. Its surveys will support a broad range of research extending far beyond the mission’s main science goals.
“Roman is exactly the kind of success story we want to see across NASA,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. “Delivered ahead of schedule and on budget, this mission reflects more than a decade of dedication from the NASA workforce and our industry partners. Now, Roman will give us a new atlas of the universe, push the boundaries of discovery, and demonstrate what is possible when America’s space program pairs bold ambition with disciplined execution.”
The ground control team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, began receiving telemetry data from Roman seven minutes after launch. The Falcon Heavy rocket performed as expected, separating from the observatory 31 minutes into the flight. After separating from the center core, the rocket’s boosters safely returned to the launch site for refurbishment.
“Roman will be a discovery machine that will bring us closer than ever before to answering humanity’s most profound questions about our cosmic history,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “With its large field of view and fast survey speeds, Roman will usher us into a new era of discovery and make the invisible visible, setting the foundation for humanity’s search for life beyond our solar system.”
During launch and early orbit, Roman uses the Near Space Network’s ground stations and relay satellites to exchange tracking, telemetry, and command data with ground controllers. About 70 minutes after launch, the Deep Space Network takes over communications and guides Roman toward the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, about one million miles from Earth. Roman connects to that network through the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Australia first. Approximately six hours later it will transfer to the Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex in Spain and then to the Goldstone Deep Space Communication Complex in California, ensuring continuous contact with Roman throughout its journey.
The Roman team also confirmed successful deployment of the observatory’s solar panels and lower instrument sun shade an hour and 23 minutes after launch. Within the upcoming days, Roman’s high-gain antenna and visor-like deployable aperture cover will deploy, ground controllers will initiate the first of two-mid-course corrections, and the Coronagraph Instrument will power on. This instrument will demonstrate the technology that future missions like NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory concept could use to image Earth-like planets in the search for life in the universe. Roman’s Coronagraph will take a giant step in that direction by snapping pictures of Jupiter-like planets.
A few weeks into Roman’s voyage, its primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument, will activate. This 300-megapixel infrared camera has 18 4K detectors, each about the size of a saltine cracker. These detectors collect photons of light that will be decoded into crisp cosmic panoramas. Thanks to the observatory’s rigid design and stable optical performance, it will rapidly scan the sky without needing substantial time between separate observations. The Roman telescope is designed to survey the universe a thousand times faster than NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Throughout the rest of Roman’s three-month commissioning period, scientists will run the instruments through a series of calibrations and tests. NASA anticipates releasing Roman’s first images by early 2027.
Roman will send back 1.4 terabytes of data every day, the highest data rate of any NASA astrophysics mission, so far. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, and citizen scientists will help sift through it and flag significant findings, which astronomers can then study.
“We’ve never been able to view the universe with eyes like Roman’s before,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “There’s no telling what more we’ll know and have seen by this time next year.”
Roman is the fourth primary mission NASA has launched on a Falcon Heavy rocket. Earlier this year, the agency’s Launch Services Program worked with SpaceX to accelerate the launch date to accommodate the space telescope’s early completion.
The telescope is managed at NASA Goddard with participation by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a team of scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc., L3Harris Technologies, and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging. Contributions to Roman also are made by ESA, JAXA, the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch at 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 30. While you wait to watch the launch, brush up on some key facts about this wide-view mission.
Teams inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida encapsulate the agency’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope within the payload fairing on Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, ahead of mating to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Encapsulation shields the spacecraft during rollout, ascent, and the early phases of flight. Roman will investigate dark energy and dark matter, conduct a statistical census of planetary systems, and enable a broad range of additional astrophysics research. Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy is targeted for no earlier than Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
NASA/Sydney Rohde (Rocz)
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The mission is named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, Dr. Nancy Grace Roman.
Roman is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman (1925–2018), NASA’s first chief of astronomy. She championed space-based observatories that could study the universe above Earth’s hazy atmosphere while making their data broadly available to the scientific community.
While she’s known as the “mother” of the Hubble Space Telescope, Roman played an even broader role as the driving force behind NASA’s entire Great Observatories program, which included Hubble along with the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the retired Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope.
Her vision and leadership helped establish NASA as a world-class scientific institution and laid the foundation for generations of space telescopes that continue to expand humanity’s understanding of the cosmos.
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Roman will transform our view of the cosmos by showing us the bigger picture.
Roman will pair a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to scan vast, deep swaths of sky. This flagship mission is designed to help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, and planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets.
Since each of Roman’s surveys will sample such a large volume of the cosmos, the mission will also offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to conduct a broad range of additional science. From objects in our outer solar system and exploding stars to growing black holes and galaxies by the billions, very little will be beyond Roman’s reach. Roman’s data will be made public as soon as it’s processed, allowing many teams to analyze it simultaneously.
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The observatory will journey a million miles to join Webb at Lagrange point 2.
Roman will orbit 1 million miles away at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), the same location as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. At L2, gravity from the Sun and Earth works together with an object’s motion around the Sun to hold it roughly in place. This balance will give Roman a relatively steady orbit without using much fuel.
Like Webb, Roman will trace out a large orbit around the actual L2 point — much larger than the Moon’s orbit around Earth — and the two will easily be kept far apart.
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The spacecraft carries the names of more than a million people.
This summer, everyone was invited to submit their name to be added to a memory card attached to a plaque on the Roman spacecraft. More than 1.3 million people did so and will have their names carried all the way to L2.
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Roman will scan the skies for at least five years.
Roman will have a primary mission lifetime of five years and is designed to support an additional five-year extended mission. Fuel is expected to be the mission’s life-limiting resource, and while NASA does not currently have an ability to service observatories at L2, Roman is designed to be refuelable.
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Two instruments will enable myriad discoveries.
The observatory’s Wide Field Instrument is a 300-megapixel infrared camera that will give Roman the same sharpness (angular resolution) as Hubble but with a field of view at least 100 times larger. Using this instrument, each Roman image will capture a patch of the sky about 1.5 times bigger than the apparent size of a full Moon.
Roman’s Coronagraph Instrument is designed to demonstrate the most advanced technologies ever flown in space for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from stars and make it possible for scientists to see the faint reflected light from planets in orbit around them, revealing giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far.
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Roman joins an international cohort of teamworking telescopes.
Roman will work in tandem with many other NASA-led and international missions to provide the most complete view of our universe yet. Roman’s large panoramas will uncover interesting targets that Hubble could follow up on using infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light to offer a more comprehensive view. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope can then use its larger mirror and more powerful vision to deliver even more detailed, ultra-sharp observations. And Roman can view regions around objects Hubble or Webb observe to offer context.
Euclid, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with key contributions from NASA, will observe a larger area of the sky than Roman, though with less detail. Since their survey areas will overlap, scientists can use Roman’s higher-quality data to apply corrections to Euclid’s, then extend these refinements over Euclid’s much larger area.
Scientists can also pair Roman’s infrared data with visible-light observations from the ground-based Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a National Science Foundation–Department of Energy collaboration. That will allow astronomers to inch closer to achieving Roman-like quality over Rubin’s much greater sky coverage.
By showcasing technology to directly photograph Jupiter-like exoplanets, Roman will also provide a crucial stepping stone for NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory concept, a flagship space telescope that would be designed to photograph Earth-like planets in other solar systems for the first time ever.
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Watch the Roman launch live from anywhere.
NASA will stream this event live through a variety of platforms. Learn where to watch online: nasa.gov/live. The launch broadcast will continue until approximately one hour past launch to follow the first several critical milestones post-launch.
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NASA expects to share Roman’s first images by early 2027.
The Roman team will complete a carefully orchestrated series of deployments, calibrations, and tests in the three months following launch before the observatory reaches its final orbit. Science operations begin once this commissioning period is completed, starting with the release of Roman’s first science images.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, encapsulated in its payload fairing, travels from the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, ahead of mating to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
Roman’s science instruments are designed to help researchers understand dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the universe’s expansion. The observatory also will map how galaxies form, cluster, and evolve by tracing the influence of dark matter. Liftoff from NASA Kennedy is targeted no earlier than Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.
NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley invites media to learn more about NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Roman telescope will provide a wide, detailed view of the universe, helping scientists study dark energy, exoplanets, and cosmic structures. Roman also will test advanced technology designed to directly image planets around nearby stars — a key step in NASA’s search for life beyond Earth.
Ames subject matter experts will be available for virtual interviews to discuss Roman’s goals and the center’s contributions to the mission on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2026, 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. PDT.
NASA Ames contributions to Roman
Innovative software developed at NASA Ames, with collaborators at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and IPAC Caltech in Pasadena, California, is designed to improve Roman’s images and optimize observing plans, enhancing the ability of astronomers to capture expansive high-resolution pictures of the universe in optical and near-infrared light.
Technology called Multi-Star Wavefront Control is designed to suppress excess light and reveal hidden exoplanets by eliminating overlapping glares from multi-star systems.
NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing Division, based at NASA Ames, brings extensive experience in data pipelines and mission operations to advise the Roman project, helping to ensure the reliable performance of Roman’s ground-based systems and operations so that science data processing is efficient and the quality and integrity of the resulting science data products is high.
To request an interview, media can contact the Ames Office of Communications: arc-dl-newsroom@nasa.gov. Media can also request agency interviews about the Roman mission outside of this window by filling out this online form.
NASA Ames Roman subject matter experts
Pamela Marcum, research scientist
Ruslan Belikov, Exoplanet Technologies Group lead
Jon M. Jenkins, TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) Science Processing Operations Center manager
For more information about NASA’s Roman mission, visit:
Jeanne Neal Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley 650-604-4789 Jeanne.c.neal@nasa.gov
To receive local NASA Ames news, email local-reporters-request@lists.arc.nasa.gov with “subscribe” in the subject line. To unsubscribe, email the same address with “unsubscribe” in the subject line.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is encapsulated within the payload fairing at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, ahead of mating to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket for launch.
Credit: NASA/Sydney Rohde (Rocz)
Coverage plans are ready for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope prelaunch and launch activities. Roman is NASA’s next-generation observatory designed to explore some of the universe’s biggest mysteries, including dark energy.
NASA and SpaceX are targeting Roman’s liftoff for no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday, Aug. 30, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Launch coverage begins at 6:20 a.m.
Live coverage of these events will stream through a variety of platforms. Learn where to watch online:
Named for NASA’s first chief astronomer, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will pair sharp infrared vision with a field of view at least 100 times larger than the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope. Its crisp, sweeping surveys will help scientists investigate dark energy and dark matter, discover and characterize exoplanets, map billions of galaxies, study black holes, and explore objects from our own solar system to the edge of the observable universe.
After launch and separation from the rocket, Roman will travel to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, about one million miles from Earth. The mission has a five-year primary lifetime with a goal of operating for 10 years, and Roman’s science data will be publicly available after processing.
NASA’s mission coverage is as follows (all times are Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):
Saturday, Aug. 29
9 a.m.: NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Mission Science Briefing: The briefing will take place in the NASA Kennedy Press Site auditorium with the following participants:
Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters
Julie McEnery, Roman telescope senior project scientist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Vanessa Bailey, Roman Coronagraph Instrument scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Kristen McQuinn, Roman Science Operations Center lead, Space Telescope Science Institute
Lee Armus, Roman Science Support Center lead, Caltech/IPAC
Media may ask questions in person or by phone. Limited auditorium space will be available for in-person participation. For the dial-in number and passcode, media should contact the NASA Kennedy newsroom no later than one hour before the briefing at: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.
10:30 a.m.: NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Prelaunch News Conference: The news conference will take place in the NASA Kennedy Press Site auditorium with the following participants:
Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Lucas Paganini, Roman telescope program executive, NASA Headquarters
Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, NASA Goddard
Denton Gibson, launch director, NASA’s Launch Services Program, NASA Kennedy
Julianna Scheiman, director, NASA Science and Dragon Programs, SpaceX
Justin McReynolds, launch weather officer, 45th Weather Squadron, U.S. Space Force
Media may ask questions in person or by phone. Limited auditorium space will be available for in-person participation. For the dial-in number and passcode, media should contact the NASA Kennedy newsroom no later than one hour before the briefing at: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.
11:45 a.m.: NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is expected to fly past the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and Falcon Heavy rocket on the launchpad in his jet. The flyby will be shown live on the same stream as the prelaunch news conference, with a view of the launch pad during the transition. The flyby is subject to weather and operational considerations.
12 p.m.: In-person interviews will take place in the NASA Kennedy Press News Center:
Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Lucas Paganini, Roman telescope program executive, NASA Headquarters
Dalia Kirschbaum, acting director, Sciences and Exploration Directorate, NASA Goddard
Josh Schlieder, Roman telescope project scientist, NASA Goddard
Jason Hylan, Roman telescope flight segment and observatory manager, NASA Goddard
Bertrand Mennesson, Roman Coronagraph Instrument project scientist, NASA JPL
Jeff Hanke, president, Space Systems, Space and Mission Systems, L3Harris Technologies
Wendy Minotti, program manager, Exquisite Imaging, Space and Mission Systems, L3Harris Technologies
Bonnie Patterson, vice president and general manager, Civil Space, Space and Mission Systems, BAE Systems
Sarah Lipscy, director, Strategic Operations, Space and Mission Systems, BAE Systems
Previously credentialed media interested in scheduling an interview should contact the NASA Kennedy newsroom at: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.
Sunday, Aug. 30
6:20 a.m.: Launch coverage begins.
7:26 a.m.: Launch
9:30 a.m.: Postlaunch news conference with the following participants:
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman
Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters
Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, NASA Goddard
Julie McEnery, Roman telescope senior project scientist, NASA Goddard
Denton Gibson, launch director, NASA’s Launch Services Program, NASA Kennedy
Media may ask questions in person or by phone. Limited auditorium space will be available for in-person participation. For the dial-in number and passcode, media should contact the NASA Kennedy newsroom no later than one hour before the news conference at: ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov.
Audio-only coverage
Audio-only coverage of the launch will be carried on the NASA “V” circuits, accessible by dialing 321-867-1220 or 321-867-1240. On launch day, mission audio countdown activities without NASA broadcast commentary will be carried on 321-867-7135.
Launch audio also will be available on Launch Information Service and Amateur Television System’s VHF radio frequency 146.940 MHz and KSC Amateur Radio Club’s UHF radio frequency 444.925 MHz, FM mode, heard within Brevard County on the Space Coast.
NASA website launch coverage
Launch day coverage will be available on the NASA website, including the livestream and blog updates as countdown milestones occur. On-demand streaming video and launch photos will be available shortly after liftoff. Follow mission updates on the Roman launch blog.
Attend launch virtually
Members of the public may register to attend the Roman launch virtually. NASA’s Virtual Guest Program includes curated launch resources, notifications about related opportunities or schedule changes, and a stamp for the NASA virtual guest passport following launch.
Watch, engage on social media
Let people know you’re watching the mission on X, Facebook, and Instagram by following and tagging these accounts:
The Roman telescope is managed at NASA Goddard with participation by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a team of scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc., L3Harris Technologies, and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging. Contributions to Roman also are made by ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), the French space agency CNES (Centre National d’Études Spatiales), and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at Kennedy, manages the launch service for the Roman mission.
For more information about NASA’s Roman telescope, visit:
[Makestreme] had always wanted to own a nice telescope, but found that budget would not stretch to anything above a cheap model with a limited 50 mm aperture. Wanting a better view of the heavens, the way forward was obvious—it was time to build a better telescope, instead!
The build is based around a 114 mm diameter mirror sourced from Amazon. It’s assembled inside a length of 5-inch PVC pipe of just under a meter to suit the 900 mm focal length of the concave reflector. 3D printed components are used to mount the mirror and control its position for proper focus and collimation. Traditionally, a reflector based telescope would use a mirror and eyepiece to provide a view to the user. However, [Makestreme] built this as a smart telescope, instead integrating a Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 at the focal point. It’s connected to a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, running off an 18650 lithium-ion cell and a 5 V boost module for portability. The Pi runs a Python script that hosts a small web server allowing access to the live camera feed along with controls for brightness, exposure, and gain. [Makestreme] then uses apps like SkyMap and SkEye to help aim the telescope at astronomical elements of interest.
If you’ve ever wanted to explore the heavens from down on Earth, building your own telescope is a great way to start. A camera-based build like this one can be a bit simpler than traditional builds, too, without the fuss of having to install an eyepiece.
Hubble Solves Merger Mystery From Milky Way’s Early Years
About 12 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy known as LKH collided with a young Milky Way and merged with it. This artist’s concept portrays that collision. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope uncovered definitive evidence of this collision by studying globular star clusters.
Illustration: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, grew to its current size in part by consuming smaller galaxies. Now, new data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope shows definitive evidence of a dwarf galaxy merging with the young Milky Way galaxy in the earliest phases of its evolution. This finding extends our knowledge of our galaxy’s history 1.8 billion years farther back in time than before.
The Milky Way today is a massive spiral galaxy home to hundreds of billions of stars. However, our galaxy wasn’t always so large; it has grown by forming new stars from its gas clouds as well as collecting stars, gas, and dark matter from other galaxies through mergers.
The most recent massive merger in our galaxy’s history took place with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, beginning over 6 billion years ago and still ongoing today. Looking back into the even more distant past, researchers learned that the Milky Way galaxy consumed another dwarf galaxy called Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus 10 billion years ago. This ancient merger greatly affected the structure of our galaxy’s disk of stars. Other, smaller mergers occurred between these two.
But our galaxy’s history doesn’t stop there. Both observations and simulations have suggested that another large merger preceded these two, though the specifics of the event have been heavily debated. Now, Hubble has uncovered definitive evidence of an earlier merger that occurred about 11.8 billion years ago, or just 2 billion years after the big bang.
“Our home is the Milky Way galaxy, but we do not know how our house was built,” said Davide Massari, lead author, Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory of Bologna in Italy. “In this paper we discover where the first significant batch of bricks came from: a dwarf galaxy that we call LKH.”
Cosmic archaeological sites
Immense astronomical surveys and precision data from spacecraft like ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Gaia mission have been instrumental in piecing together the history of our galaxy. The farther back into our galaxy’s history that scientists attempt to look, the more difficult it becomes to tell what happened. When our galaxy was young, it was smaller and much closer in size to the galaxies it clashed with. It was also more chaotic, and it’s possible that the signs of mergers have been erased over billions of years.
It’s into this murky past that Hubble peered. Researchers used Hubble to study some of the Milky Way galaxy’s globular clusters: immense, roughly spherical collections of tens of thousands to a few million stars. Globular clusters contain some of the oldest stars in our galaxy, and they can act as cosmic archaeological sites that preserve stars from other galaxies the Milky Way galaxy has collected.
“Thanks to the high resolution and depth of Hubble imaging, we could measure the age and the metal content of these clusters with unprecedented precision,” said Chiara Zerbinati, study co-author, University of Bologna in Italy. “Coupled with measurements from Gaia, this made it possible to distinguish a population of globular clusters that are different from the others. These are the clusters that were born in LKH, and they tell us when that galaxy was devoured by ours, and how massive it was.”
The team analyzed Hubble observations of 39 globular clusters in the inner 20,000 light-years of our galaxy, where evidence of the most ancient mergers should be preserved. They expected this sample to contain globular clusters that formed within the young Milky Way galaxy as well as those collected from the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus dwarf galaxy about 10 billion years ago.
Using Hubble’s sensitive observations to determine each cluster’s precise age and associated metallicity — the abundance of elements heavier than helium — they determined there was a third population of globular clusters in the inner regions of our galaxy. The team found that these clusters are older than the group collected in the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus merger, but younger than those born in the Milky Way, regardless of their metal content. These clusters, therefore, came from a separate and even earlier merger — in which the Milky Way galaxy absorbed a dwarf galaxy containing roughly 500 million times the mass of the Sun in stars, a significant fraction of our galaxy’s mass at the time. They named this dwarf galaxy Low-energy-Kraken-Heracles, or LKH, in honor of three earlier research papers that championed the idea of a merger early in our galaxy’s history.
Such a large merger so early in the Milky Way galaxy’s formation has profound implications for the evolution of our galaxy.
“Some past studies have argued that the earliest phases of our galaxy’s evolution were defined by stars born only in our galaxy,” says Massari. “Here, we have shown that stars born in external galaxies also need to be considered.”
The team plans to continue their work to unravel the history of the Milky Way galaxy by studying its globular clusters, aiming to characterize all the massive mergers that our galaxy has experienced across cosmic history.
“Hubble is observing globular clusters that have never been studied before, and this will help us characterize the merger events that are far back in time in the Milky Way galaxy’s history,” said Fernando Aguado-Agelet, co-author, University of Vigo and the University of La Laguna in Spain.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for more than three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
About 12 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy known as LKH collided with a young Milky Way and merged with it. This artist’s concept portrays that collision. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope uncovered definitive evidence of this collision by studying globular star clusters.
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