NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is poised to make a major leap in the hunt for worlds outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. Scientists expect the mission to reveal around 100,000 worlds — a staggering leap compared to the nearly 6,300 found so far thanks to NASA missions working in tandem with other observatories. And Roman will primarily find them in underexplored regions of the Milky Way.“Our galaxy is home to a variety of different environments, but when it comes to hunting for exoplanets, we’ve really only explored one: our own neighborhood,” said Elisa Quintana, an exoplanet researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Quintana leads a team focused on building software and simulations to help prepare for Roman’s exoplanet transit observations. “Roman will extend the search far enough to encompass other galactic habitats, which could help us learn how planet formation varies across different regions of the Milky Way.”
Most known exoplanets are located within a couple thousand light-years of Earth. But one of Roman’s core surveys will peer all the way through the Milky Way’s galactic bulge, the central hub where stars are packed more densely than anywhere else, to the fringes of the far side of the galaxy.
Exploring Earth’s birthplace
Roman will monitor stars scattered throughout a deep slice of the galaxy to watch for any that chan …