NASA has unveiled new plans for the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, due for launch in 2027, alongside new discoveries from the Juno spacecraft, currently orbiting Jupiter. These two missions mark major steps in exploring both the deep universe and the outer solar system, offering unprecedented insights into the cosmos.
Panoramic View of the Universe
The Roman Telescope, designed to study some of the deepest questions in astrophysics, will conduct three major surveys that will shape 75% of its 5-year primary mission. These include the High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey, the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey, and the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey. The remaining 25% will be reserved for proposals from the broader astronomical community.
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With a field of view 100 times greater than that of the Hubble Space Telescope, Roman will image vast regions of space with incredible detail. Gail Zasowski, co-chair of the Roman Observations Time Allocation Committee, says the mission’s overarching goal is to provide astronomers with powerful new datasets to explore questions about dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanet populations.
The High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey will map over a billion galaxies, helping researchers decode the nature of dark energy through their shapes and distributions. The Time-Domain Survey will repeatedly observe the same region of space, enabling scientists to track how galaxies, stars, and even black holes change over time. This approach allows the detection of rare phenomena like neutron star mergers and tidal disruption events — stellar flares caused by stars being torn apart by black holes.
Meanwhile, the Galactic Bulge Survey will focus inward, peering into the dense centre of the Milky Way. It will monitor hundreds of millions of stars, searching for habitable worlds, rogue planets, and stellar remnants like white dwarfs and neutron stars. “These survey designs are the culmination of two years of input from over 1,000 scientists from 350 institutions worldwide,” says Roman’s senior project scientist, Julie McEnery. “The mission will open up possibilities we haven’t yet imagined.”
Juno Reveals Fiery Moon and Giant Storms
While Roman looks forward, NASA’s Juno mission, launched in 2011 and orbiting Jupiter since 2016, continues to deliver new science ahead of its expected end in September 2025, or the end of the spacecraft’s life.
Juno recently used its Microwave Radiometer (MWR) to study Io, Jupiter’s intensely volcanic moon. The instrument, originally built to study Jupiter’s atmosphere, detected still-warm magma beneath Io’s crust — evidence that large parts of the moon are still cooling after intense volcanic activity. Around 10% of Io’s surface consists of these cooling lava flows, which act like radiators, releasing internal heat into space.
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Juno also provided the first temperature readings of Jupiter’s north polar cap, revealing it is around 11°C cooler than surrounding areas and surrounded by 160 km/h winds. It also continues to observe Jupiter’s massive polar cyclones, including a 3,000-kilometre-wide central storm surrounded by eight smaller cyclones. These cyclones interact like mechanical springs, “bouncing” off each other while drifting westward and maintaining their configuration. “Everything about Jupiter is extreme,” says Juno’s principal investigator, Scott Bolton. “From violent storms and powerful auroras to Io’s lava fields, Juno is revealing the energetic complexity of the outer solar system.”