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NASA’s new dark energy space telescope can also detect killer asteroids
At the end of August, NASA is set to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Its quest is to help us better understand how the universe works, from the glue-like dark matter that keeps galaxies together to the elusive dark energy that drives the expansion of the cosmos.
But Roman could also serve another purpose: defending Earth from killer asteroids. In September, a multi-institutional team of planetary scientists and astronomers will outline how it’s uniquely placed to scan asteroids, and provide information about their trajectories, sizes and compositions.
Read our story about how this new space telescope might boost planetary defense.
—Robin George Andrews
MIT Technology
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