Episode description:  

NASA is about to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will change the way we see the universe and settle essential questions about some of the biggest mysteries out there. In a new limited series, Curious Universe takes you behind the scenes with NASA scientists and engineers who made Roman a reality—no Ph.D. required.  

Learn more about the Roman Space Telescope at nasa.gov/roman

[Music: Castles in Space by Richard John Hampson] 

HUBBLE LAUNCH ANNOUNCER: T-minus 10. Go for main engine start.  

HOST PADI BOYD: NASA is about to send a powerful new telescope into space—the latest in a legacy of exploration.  

HOST JACOB PINTER: First there was Hubble.  

HUBBLE LAUNCH ANNOUNCER: And liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope, our window on the universe. 

JACOB: Then the James Webb Space Telescope, designed to show us cosmic dawn.  

ROB NAVIAS, NASA COMMUNICATIONS: From a tropical rain forest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe.  

PADI: Every new telescope—every new tool—reveals something unexpected.  

JULIE MCENERY: That was crazy. 

JOSH SCHLIEDER: If you have 2 billion galaxies, there’s 2,000 things that are one in a million.  

ALINA KIESSLING: It’s very counterintuitive. People weren’t expecting this result. 

PADI: Now, a new NASA telescope is ready to join them in exploring the biggest mysteries out there.  

[several experts say “Roman”]  

JULIE: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. 

[Music: Cloud Network by Christopher John White] 

JACOB: Get ready for NASA’s new view of the universe and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope with a special limited series of NASA’s Curious Universe.  

PADI: Roman has a wide field of view that will capture a huge swath of the sky.  

JOSH: Every single image is going to be a sea of stars and galaxies. 

JACOB: … and provide scientists with incredible new details about space. 

JULIE: So we’re going to study the things that we know about, and we’re going to find the things we didn’t even know to look for. 

JACOB: On Curious Universe, we dive into the science behind the Roman Space Telescope.  

PADI: No Ph.D. required.  

JULIE: So you’re asking for the 10-second description of how the universe entirely works. (laughs)  

[Music: Pressurization Trailer by JC Lemay] 

JACOB: Roman will investigate a mysterious force called dark energy. So far, experts have more questions about dark energy than answers. 

ALINA: We just know so little about it. So, while you asked me to start at ground zero and give you the five-minute introduction, I think you and your listeners now know as much about dark energy as most of the scientists. 

PADI: But Roman is designed to shed light on dark energy, and what we find could make astronomers rethink some basic information we thought we knew about the universe.  

ALINA: That’s super exciting, potentially Nobel Prize-winning science. 

PADI: Roman will also discover and study planets beyond our solar system.  

[Music: Case Notes by Terell Omar Farrell] 

JACOB: Far away from us around distant stars, scientists have already found thousands of these exoplanets. Roman will look toward the center of our own Milky Way.  

VANESSA BAILEY: … where it can see literally hundreds of thousands of stars in a single image at once. We know that most stars have planets.  

JACOB: … which means Roman will detect thousands more exoplanets out there.  

PADI: With a cutting-edge piece of technology, Roman will see far more detail of some planets than we’ve ever seen before.  

VANESSA: These planets are so incredibly faint that you get one photon—one particle of light—arriving at our camera from one of those planets once every few seconds or maybe even once every minute. So we are getting one little smudge to try to tease out what the atmosphere might be made of. 

PADI: In our series, we’ll also meet the engineers who make NASA space telescopes. 

[Music: Dots and Dashes by Jan Telegra] 

MARK MELTON: We’re building one-of-a-kind satellites. It’s never been built before. No one’s going to build this again.  

JACOB: You’ll get up close with technicians as they carefully assemble Roman inside a huge clean room. 

PADI: And visit a specialized test chamber that mimics the extreme environment of space—mostly.  

MATT STEPHENS: I mean, we’re artificially making space in there, right? We’re making a vacuum. We’re making the temperatures. We’re doing everything we can but turn off gravity, because we can’t do that, right? 

JACOB: Along the way, NASA experts will help us understand what it all means for scientists and engineers and also for the rest of us, just trying to wrap our minds around what’s out there.  

ALINA: It’s very surreal. 

MARK: And I sat down, and I got a little tear in my eye, and I kind of choked up, like, wow … (fade out) 

JOSH: It’ll be a real image of something out there in the universe, a real sky scene, and, you know, it’ll be the first time we’ve ever seen it in this way.  

JULIE: The most exciting science is going to be the thing that you didn’t expect. 

MARK: … which is kind of crazy to me. 

PADI: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches soon.  

JACOB: And so does a special limited series all about Roman right here on NASA’s Curious Universe, an official NASA podcast.  

PADI: New episodes coming soon. 

JULIE: And then the fun really begins.