LIVE: NASA reveals Roman telescope

[00:23:35]We have a standard model that is exquisite at describing the properties of the universe that we live in.

[00:23:43]But there are hints of a problem with that model.

[00:23:50]Roman will tell us if our model is wrong.

[00:23:59]>> Andrew, are you ready to go?

[00:24:01]>> You're good.

[00:24:02]>> We're ready. And what's spectacular about Roman is Roman will be able to tell us if we were wrong and put us on the path to figuring out what's right.

[00:24:14]>> Starting run This time, a year from today, we're going to have a different understanding of the universe than we have right now because of the observations from the Nancy Chris Roman Space Telescope.

[00:24:50]Control reports. Test complete.

[00:25:03]Good afternoon and welcome to NASA's Gddard Space Flight Center in Green Belt, Maryland. I'm NASA's senior adviser and press secretary Bethany Stevens and I will be your moderator today. We are joined today by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, associate administrator of the science mission directorate, Dr. Mickey Fox, Nancy Grace Roman, Space Telescope project manager Jamie Dunn, and senior project scientist Julie Mckenry. Each of today's participants will provide brief remarks about our progress on the Nancy Grace Spa Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and then we will open the floor to questions. If you're joining us online, please press star one to join the question queue on the phone bridge.

[00:25:47]With that, administrator, the floor is yours.

[00:25:49]>> Great. Thank you, Bethany. Good afternoon everybody. As you can see behind me, the impressive Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is now fully assembled, has completed testing, and is undergoing the final preparations before it'll be shipped to Kennedy Space Center to soon take its place among America's great observatories alongside Hubble and the James Web Space Telescope. Now, our team dedicated over a decade of their lives and millions of hours to make this project a reality. Because of their hard work, I have the privilege of announcing today that we are now targeting uh an early September launch, eight months ahead of schedule and under budget. To everyone at GDDARD and across all our centers, congratulations. I hope each of you take pride in what you've accomplished. Roman's accelerated development is a true success story of what we can achieve when public investment, institutional expertise, and private enterprise come together to take on the near impossible missions that change the world.

[00:26:47]Unlocking the secrets of the universe and attempting to answer the question, "Are we alone?" is inherent in just about all we do here at NASA. At our recent ignition event, we made a commitment to pursue gold standard science as quickly as we possibly can.

[00:27:00]Knowing the world is waiting for the headlines that only NASA is capable of making. Today marks a milestone of NASA delivering upon that promise. Roman will investigate dark matter, dark energy, and the structure of the universe itself and accelerate the future of discovery of potentially habitable planets outside our solar system. It's its surveying capabilities are over 1,000 times faster than Hubble and can chart 200 times more sky in a single image. And what would take Hubble 2,000 years to process, Roman can do in a year. The images it captures will be so large there is not a screen in existence large enough to show them. Roman will give the Earth a new atlas of the universe. And I think it's worth pausing for a moment and just think about how really incredible that is. The farther we reach into space, the greater our curiosity to understand the great unknown. So to our work force and commercial partners making today's rare announcement possible, thank you for bringing us to this moment. For the researchers and scientists that will analyze the data from Roman, your work will soon begin. And for those that built this telescope, let's get ready for what comes next. Thank you, and I'll hand it over now to Dr. Fox.

[00:28:11]>> Thank you so much, Administrator Isaacman. Um, I could not be more excited to be here today in front of this fully stacked and complete Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. And doesn't she look beautiful? I mean, honestly, just gorgeous. We're on track, as the administrator said, to launch early in September. and that is I can't stop saying it ahead of schedule and under budget. Um and I want to give praise again to this incredible team. Team NASA totally brought it um together with all of our partners in industry in academia and our international partners. It is an amazing day to see what happens when we come together and work in such an effective way. Since early in 2020, the Roman team has worked almost around the clock to develop and test the spacecraft and the hardware, uh, completing the the flagship mission in just six years, which is a true testament to the AY's commitment to do science, cuttingedge science, even faster. Their work ethic and their teamwork in combination with the lessons learned from our long history at NASA, a developing space-based flagship observatories are why we're sitting in such a good spot today with all eyes on the launch pad about eight months earlier than we'd actually expected, which is so good.

[00:29:31]Well done. And this is just the beginning. Uh we want to get more science into space, launch at a faster rate, and increase the pace of discovery as we prepare to launch more cuttingedge missions.

[00:29:45]The Nancy Grace uh Roman Space Telescope is a sheer powerhouse. It is literally a speed machine. The speed at which we'll be scanning the sky, delivering vast amounts of data, and returning results will be at an unprecedented rate never done before. Hubble gathered 172 terabytes of data in its first 30 years.

[00:30:06]Roman will downlink 1.4 terabytes of science data every day. Uh that means it will potentially have about two uh 2500 terabytes over the course of its 5-year mission and basically gathering like a hypothetical stack of science papers that would reach up to beyond the moon, maybe even as far as Artemus 2 went.

[00:30:30]um when uh when you apply uh what Roman will see um you know we've already confirmed today over about 6,000 planets Roman will discover tens of thousands of new planets outside our solar system it will reveal billions of galaxies thousands of supernova and tens of billions of stars that is extremely exciting and literally all of the science that we can use to apply and build off our interconnected NASA science portfolio. Roman will help us address the question of how common solar systems like ours actually are. Uh while also literally expanding the human mind to what the universe contains at an astounding rate. Roman isn't just doing Hubble and web science faster, however, and I know it's very easy when we focus on the speed. It's doing fundamentally different science that could not be done with either observatory. Together, the three missions will complement each other, giving us a more complete picture of the cosmos and advancing our understanding of the universe. where uh when Roman is operating on orbit at the end of this year, it will also be NASA's first major demonstration for achieving one of the goals of the habitable worlds observatory, a concept for the first telescope designed to find like worlds in different, you know, outside our solar system in different stellar systems while exploring the broad secrets of the universe. Right now, Roman has the most stable telescope and the absolute best coronagraph that has ever flown in space. The Habitable Worlds Observatory will rely on even more than that. And it is so important to us that we get this coronagraph into space and get that first milestone towards the next mission because everything we do at NASA science builds off the successes of what we've done before. I am so proud that Roman will join kind of the ark of past, present and now future missions as well. Um and it will definitely definitely open doors to new cosmic pursuits. So again congratulations to the entire Roman team again including our private sector our our academia and our international partners. This is such an incredible team. I am so proud of them. Go NASA. Go Falcon Heavy. Go Roman. Jamie, >> thank you. Um, so, um, it's tough tough words to follow and I'm going to be followed up by even tougher words. So, I'm not going to talk about the science because Julie's going to blow your mind with that. U, but I would like to take this opportunity to uh expand a little bit about how we did get here. Uh, and just take this opportunity to thank our team. Um, as as Nikki and and the administrator have already mentioned, it uh is a lot of work. Millions of hours is no exaggeration. That's uh actual actual math. We could figure it out exactly, but it's many millions. And um this really is a great example of what happens when uh we as an agency work handinand with industry and academia. uh we we work to each other's strengths and uh it's really an example of how the uh the result is greater than the sum of all the parts. So um the the the amount of of um dil excuse me diligence and uh and dedication and commitment to making this happen is really uh it's really fun to be a part of. And so this team is really proud to have all of you here to come see this. Uh this I can't tell you how excited they are when people come. Last week we had friends and family day. We had about 700 people come through and uh watching the kids uh get all excited.

[00:34:22]You don't get to see spacecraft every day. So um I just want to again thank everybody that made this possible. Uh for everybody that you see, there's dozens more behind them. Um it's not just engineers and scientists. It's everybody. It's our financial team. It's our contracts people. It's our CM people. It's everybody. Technicians. Uh it's it's it's really a great team. And so this has been a wonderful experience.

[00:34:48]Um and uh I'm glad you guys get to be a part of it by coming here and seeing. We can't wait to launch.

[00:34:55]>> Thank you, Jeremy.

[00:34:58]>> Hi everyone.

[00:35:01]Current observations hint that our standard model of the universe is incorrect.

[00:35:07]Roman will be able to confirm these and set us on the path to understanding what's right.

[00:35:14]We're going to perform a revolutionary census of planets around other stars in our galaxy. We're going to conduct ambitious surveys that will transform and impact every area of astronomy.

[00:35:26]And we can do all this because Roman's primary instrument combines exquisite performance and sensitivity with an outstanding ability to sweep out large regions of the sky. Previous speakers have mentioned that Roman can survey the sky a thousand times faster than Hubble.

[00:35:43]So to put this into context, one month of Roman observations would correspond to a century with Hubble.

[00:35:51]So Nikki mentioned that Roman doesn't do Hubble science faster. Roman will address entirely new ambitious science questions. So that one month of Roman observations could be used to survey our own Milky Way galaxy, uncovering up to half the stars in the galaxy. That would itself result in an astronomical catalog of objects that is much larger than any that in existence today. And that's with just one month of Roman observations.

[00:36:23]Our main survey will take more than a year. It's huge.

[00:36:28]If we were to take the single image that is produced from our main survey and try and fully display it with a set of uh 4K TVs, you need more than half a million 4K TVs.

[00:36:39]And just to give you a sense of the scale of that, if I was to lay out those 4K TVs, it would cover 45 city blocks.

[00:36:47]or to pick something that you actually look at. It would entirely cover El Capitan in Yeusede National Park.

[00:36:55]I don't suggest we actually cover El Capitan with a set of 4K TVs, but it gives you a sense of the scale.

[00:37:03]That survey will detect over two billion galaxies.

[00:37:09]And we'll use it to study how the structures in the universe, the stars, the galaxies, the structures of galaxies grow, grew, and evolved.

[00:37:20]We'll also study how the universe itself has expanded over time. And these are the keys to unlocking the fundamental nature of dark matter, dark energy, and the fabric of the universe itself.

[00:37:34]Periodically, we'll point towards the center of our own galaxy and monitor hundreds of millions of stars. But we're not going to just image millions of stars. We're going to find a treasure trove of exoplanets, up to 40 times more than are known today. So, think of this as the largest census we've ever done of planets in our galaxy.

[00:37:58]We have a second instrument, the Roman coronagraph. And I think of this as doing magic with physics. We take advantage of the wave properties of light to cancel out the light of a bright star so that we can image faint planets next to it. To do this magic, we have to have an optical system that can adjust itself to maintain sufficient precision. This will be the first time we've had a system in space with this kind of active optics, and it will set us on a path for future observatories to do extraordinary new things.

[00:38:34]What makes me most excited about Roman is its discovery space. If we have two billion galaxies, it means we have 2,000, one in a million objects. We're going to be surveying patches of the sky, going back over and over and over again to find new things that go bump in the night. I very much hope and in fact expect that the most exciting science from Roman is going to be the things that we didn't expect that we couldn't predict but that will set the new deep questions for future missions to address. Thank you.

[00:39:06]And with that, we will open the floor to questions if anybody in the room has Well, Jeff, we'll start with you.

[00:39:17]Jeff Fa, Space News question for the administrator. You and others have emphasized that Roman has come in under budget, ahead of schedule. Roman is still a multi-billion dollar mission. Is there still room at NASA for large flagship class missions when the AY's science budget is facing a significant budget cut in 2027 and potentially beyond?

[00:39:39]>> Well, Jeeoff, I I certainly understand why uh why the question is coming up.

[00:39:44]I'll say that uh you and everybody else who's interested in uh kind of my views on the budget and how it impacts the agency. We'll have plenty of opportunities to hear about it over the next week since I'm on the grand hearing uh testimony tour. In fact, starting uh starting tomorrow, uh Nancy Grace Roman is not the last flagship mission for us.

[00:40:02]In fact, here at Gddard, we're working on Dragonfly. Uh Goddard is responsible for a lot of the uh tech maturation associated with the Habitable Worlds Observatory telescope. We've uh we've got a number of signature um uh while not ne necessarily measuring to the flagship spend category that's being worked on at JPL right now like Skyfall, Moonfall, and others. So science is incredibly important to what we do here.

[00:40:24]As I mentioned in my remarks, going out and trying to unlock the secrets of the universe is fundamental to NASA's mission. I expect there'll be plenty of flagship missions in the future.

[00:40:34]>> We'll go back here to this gentleman.

[00:40:36]We'll start over here and then move through the room.

[00:40:44]And then also if you could hand the mic back after answer or asking your question to our micr runner that'll help us get to the next people.

[00:40:51]>> My questions for the administrator Jared. Uh there's something online called the Artemis 2 effect as part of the Kerbal Space Program community.

[00:40:59]We're all excited about what happened with Artemis 2. Kids I've talked to fifth graders. I talked to a hundred of them last week. They're all really excited. So, how do we use this telescope to continue that excitement for the young generation?

[00:41:14]>> Yeah. Well, um I think it I think it starts with uh listening to some of the great commentary that Julie just said. I mean, I've got a 100 questions coming out of just your your intro right there.

[00:41:24]Look, I I am I am thrilled uh that the world kind of paused for a moment and took notice to Artemis 2 and yeah, I think energized the world's interest in space exploration. Human exploration tends to do that at times, but if it's an opportunity to set the stage for other conversations like Nancy Grace Roman is about to do, that's fantastic as well. We put out some uh some great uh like a video reel on it today to get people hyped up about it and won't be long before this telescope is loaded up on a transport and taken down. And then it's of course being launched by a Falcon Heavy that brings a lot of viewers to take interest where we'll have opportunities there where Julie, I sure hope that you're on the uh the live stream for that mission launch to get people excited about the kind of science this mission's going to undertake. So this is great. This is working really well. We're thrilled that Artemis 2 brought a big audience back to uh to NASA and now we're going to fill it up with a lot of exciting missions to come.

[00:42:18]Nancy Grace Roman's next up.

[00:42:20]>> I'm going to hand this off so somebody >> go right here.

[00:42:25]>> Hi, uh Nick Alexander for Space Scout.

[00:42:28]You know, Goddard has a long history with telescopes. We've, you know, seen some great work on Hubble. We've seen the James Webb Space Telescope come out of Goddard. What can we do to ensure that legacy that culture of telescopes continues to be centered at Gddard Space Flight Center?

[00:42:47]>> So I think you know it is that's where our expertise is and at NASA science God gard is kind of the the heart of NASA science um and certainly we look to to to GDAard to lead the way in a lot of our our big missions. Um they clearly have the heart of astrophysics here. Um they are you know doing a fantastic job clearly with this. The uh the project office for the tech maturation program for HAB have worlds is at GDAard and we expect that to continue and expect to see them continue to do great things.

[00:43:22]>> We can go right here.

[00:43:28]>> Sorry Jared, I'm going to hit you up again. Um, so you're the new administrator and you have this mission that you may have heard is under budget on on time. What lessons can you take away from this and kind of a correlary is this has this mission has an interesting history where the optics came from originally. Are people going to just take that and say no wonder it came in under budget or >> uh so I'll I'm going to stick to first part of the question uh and say that um I'm thrilled that this mission is getting close to uh its ability to launch so that we can uh we can take Jamie here and uh apply him to a number of other exciting projects. his name. I mentioned when we had a chance to to shake hands in the the warm-up to this that your name is continuing to come up quite a bit as a extremely talented project manager. So, yes, look, I think that's actually very important because uh we do have success stories like uh like Nancy Grace Roman uh coming in ahead of schedule and and under budget.

[00:44:28]We certainly have programs or examples that that are not. And when you think about that and you think about going over budget or in some cases extremely unfortunate cases where programs are are cancelled, there is dollars there are dollars lost from that that never come back. When you total them up, what does that equal? It equals another Nancy Grace Roman telescope or or or maybe a second Dragonfly for that matter on that. So I think that uh having the uh capturing good lessons learned uh we talk about debriefs a lot and we get things get things wrong to avoid repeating them. But when we get things right and have success stories like uh Nancy Grace Roman, let's learn from some of the magic that uh that uh created that outcome and try and apply it to other programs. And I suspect um I expect Jamie's going to be in big demand across uh big agency initiatives going forward.

[00:45:18]>> Take the second part.

[00:45:22]Can >> you repeat the question?

[00:45:24]>> So, you got the optics from this from another agency. Or is somebody going to say, "Hey, no wonder it came in under >> uh someone might say that, but they'd be wrong."

[00:45:35]>> Um, seriously, the um so it's diffic it's one of these things. It's difficult to prove a a negative. So, uh who knows, right? It's a different it's a different beast when you start with something uh that you have to completely remodel if you will versus starting from scratch. U it's honestly it's anybody's guess which one comes out ahead. But uh that posed its own challenges. It did not make it easy. Um and I'll reiterate that uh while I appreciate the accolades um and I'm the person sitting here I had um I only had a very small part to do with this. It's really it's really our team.

[00:46:14]We have a wonderful team. Uh we've done a good job of bringing both the experience base from the decades literally decades of uh of experience here at GDDARD and again with our partners. I mean we've worked with Ball and and L3 Harris on many missions um and others right Teladine can keep going down the list. Um, and so we we really have part of the magic I think is is a really good mix of that experience brought forward over decades combined with uh what what you would call youthful exuberance. We have uh we have a lot of of fresh blood that's come in and they have just you know knocked it out of the park. So it's really good mix of folks that makes this happen.

[00:46:59]>> Thank you.

[00:47:00]>> Hi Elicia Sour from Mashable. Um, I think this is a question probably for Julie Nikki. Um, I'm I'm wondering could you give a practical example of how the flagship um telescopes will work together on particular observations?

[00:47:19]Could you give us an example?

[00:47:26]There was a really cool result from Hubble, I think about a year, maybe two years ago, where what they thought they were seeing was a super massive black hole that was traveling through space.

[00:47:39]And you could see from the observations the evidence of that uh transit and it was extraordinarily lucky that Hubble was able to catch that.

[00:47:50]Roman would be able to find some things like that in spades because we're surveying such a large part of the sky and then we can follow up with detailed measurements with uh the James Websp space telescope now that we know where to where to look. So you could consider one of Roman's uh roles to be something like a finding chart for um for the James Web Space Telescope that we find some of we'll find some of the most extraordinary unique places in the universe and that we can direct our most powerful scopes to really hone in on the details and take advantage of Roman's breath and Hubble's depth.

[00:48:32]>> No, I can move back here. I would have gone into wavelength and that's nowhere near as good as >> I excuse me. Uh I just want to say congratulations on an awesome first four months of 2026 when you go across whether it's science directorate obviously Artemis it's been unbelievable. So with regards specifically to Roman though we had an announcement Jared on the launch date. I wonder if there are any promotional announcements coming for the people involved in the project.

[00:49:12]>> Sorry, when you're saying promote, >> I would assume some Well, I'm wondering who's getting promoted for delivering >> ahead of schedule and under budget.

[00:49:20]>> Yeah. Um, so that's uh that's a very good and serious question because as I mentioned before, we do want to debrief our success stories and learn from them and uh and take those lessons, apply them elsewhere. And also one of the I think it actually was my first directive that I put out which was um you know recognize, reward and inspire the top tier uh talent within the agency uh when you do have extraordinary outcomes. So I would expect uh to your to your point that will certainly come into play here.

[00:49:53]>> We'll move to Will.

[00:49:59]>> I will Robinson Smith with Spaceflight Now. Thank you all for the the time today. Going back to Julie, your opening remarks, you know, something you said caught my ear, which is there's things that we got wrong about our understanding of the galaxy of the universe. I know based on everything that we've heard today from from the panel and from others, we're going to learn a lot more from uh Roman, but what specifically did we get wrong that this can correct the record on? Thank you.

[00:50:32]>> I'm just trying to think about how to say this uh concisely. So we have a extraordinarily good model of how the universe works that describes the cosmic microwave background at the earliest times and describes with great accuracy the universe that we live in today. And that's included things like the Hubble constant. It's included things like a cosmological constant for uh for dark energy. It's included the concept and the effect of dark matter on the universe that we live in.

[00:51:10]But there's been cracks. We're seeing evidence that the cosmod that the Hubble constant as inferred from very early times is not consistent with the Hubble constant that we measure closer to now which is telling us that the model that connects those two things might not be quite right. We have a slight tension in our expectations for how structure should grow and evolve. And excitingly, recently we've seen evidence that the cosmological constant might in fact not be constant and might be varying with time. And each one of those results is not quite by itself enough to take it to the bank and say that we're wrong.

[00:51:54]And what you need is a mission that can or an experiment that can probe the universe to about a factor of 10 better than we did before. And that will allow us to confirm if indeed lambda CDM our standard model isn't correct and will leave us with a mission that has uh the sensitivity and the performance to make the kinds of observations that we need to start laying out what the real answer might be or what an improved model might be.

[00:52:26]We'll move up here.

[00:52:31]>> Hi, Manisha Ravasti with space.com. I have maybe a bit of a peculiar question and it's an engineering question, but anyone is you can chime in. Um, I feel like often when creating, you know, space missions, observatories, you're kind of breaking ground in like the materials you're using, the temperatures that you're testing at, and there tends to be these like side effects of like innovation that other fields of science can like take advantage of. So, did you find any examples of this during your process?

[00:53:03]>> I mean, who wants to answer?

[00:53:06]Go.

[00:53:08]So you're right and I think that with our astrophysics missions we really do push the boundaries of what's been done before. Every time we do new precision optics we I mentioned this is the most stable uh telescope u the mo it has the most cutting edge coronagraph. It has precision optics. If you just think about the James web space telescope that brought about like um the the actual grinding of the mirrors or sorry the polishing of the mirrors not grinding sorry astrophysicist polishing of the mirrors. um um would you know brought about leaps in in medicine in in optics in LASIK I mean all of the things there with um Roman we expect to see the same things can I tell you right now what's going to spin off no but the way that this telescope is constructed the precision optics the stability is absolutely once again going to push industry and things that they've had to design and they've had to like change their methods to be able to get to this level actually benefits everybody because now the whole optics field has improved dramatically.

[00:54:14]>> Move over here.

[00:54:21]>> Hi, I'm Marina Corin with National Geographic. I think this question is for either the administrator or Dr. Fox or both. Um, looking ahead to the next big space telescope, the Habitable World Observatory, uh, we heard from the team today that they're going to be spending the next few years looking at the mission concept and seeing if they can make happen an 11 billion mission by 2020 by 2045 launch. Um, if they come to you and say we can't do that, what's the next step? How do you go about making that mission happen?

[00:54:53]So I think you know the way we are thinking about habitable worlds I mean somebody mentioned about um you know what what made Nancy Grace Roman such a such a um a success and a lot of it is making sure that the technology is ready to to go. So before you actually start sprinting with a mission you've actually assured that you can do the mission and so with habitable worlds we're putting a lot of focus right now on maturing the technology. We've got a lot of our industry partners actually working on that right now. Um there's a big milestone in 2028 when we will actually sort of step back and look and say is this mission possible? If the mission is possible we will sprint to do the mission and it will not be 2045 and it will not be 11 billion. We we will put a real budget and a real schedule with you know as the administrator said several times we're not interested on in doing something now that's going to launch in the 2040s. We want to pull that in and I think with the with the new focus on doing thing you know faster to science faster to space our industry partners have told us that they are I'm I'm looking at them um they are up to this challenge um and they are excited about doing this and they don't want to wait till 2045 to launch this mission either.

[00:56:03]Um we didn't want to wait um to launch the Nancy Grace Roman. We're eight months ahead of schedule. I'm going to say that like 20 times. Um but we are you know we can't wait to launch this mission. Everybody felt the urgency.

[00:56:14]Everybody was sprinting towards this.

[00:56:16]And I think that, you know, now we've shown we can do it. We have a large mission study that we did at NASA where we looked across the entire space portfolio um and looked at lessons learned. What worked? What didn't work?

[00:56:27]What do you need to do? What what shouldn't you do? What are the barriers?

[00:56:31]What are the impediments? And we are really, really, really focused on removing those and allowing teams to just push and execute. And so honestly if if a team comes to me and says you know in 2028 it's 2045 and this much budget then they won't be getting funded.

[00:56:49]>> Just add on a bit. It's a it's a good question. This um this has come up a lot in various circles that I've had conversations with including including Congress those on the side that are extremely supportive of initiative like Capital Worlds and others that get concerned based on pretty much everything you just said. It's a well it's a it's a mission that's going to launch potentially 20 years from now and it's you know 10 plus billion dollars and I fear at times that um this isn't necessarily specific to habitable worlds but maybe within some history of NASA that we design programs that are that are too big to fail but then they become too costly to truly succeed. Um, and I don't think that's the right approach.

[00:57:27]And maybe maybe it's believed that taking that approach is a way to have continuity and survive between administrations. And I actually think the the right way to go about it and similar to what we're trying to do now with the moon base is a lot of littles and uh to do things in an iterative way to learn and bring down risk and maybe as a result the overall project cost in itself could wind up being more but what you get out of it is greater and and you do it in a you know again in a in a faster way. So uh any commentary I've ever um made as with respect to habitable worlds is uh what can we launch sooner to learn uh and help us get to the overall objective of what habitable worlds is which is extraordinary and something everybody would want. And in that respect, if it turned out over that same 20-year period of time, the actual program cost was greater than say 10 uh10 billion, but included three scientific instruments that ultimately built up to the grand, you know, the grand exploration asset that we hope worlds to be. I think that's how you actually have continuity through administrations, how you get to data faster and ultimately derisk the the mega telescope that you want out there searching for um for habitable worlds. We're going to move over to the phone bridge for just a moment and start with Nell Greenfield Boyce from NPR.

[00:58:47]>> Having this briefing, um you mentioned the numbers of extra solar uh planets that um the Roman Space Telescope will be able to find. Could you talk a little bit more about uh what about the planet this telescope could reveal like particularly with its direct imaging capabilities? Thank you.

[00:59:08]Okay. So, um when I was talking about the large number of planets that we would find, um I was focusing on the planets that we find via indirect um means and for that we can measure things like masses and radius of the planet from the host star. Um so that will give us a complete picture of um the distribution of planets around stars from very close into the star all the way um to the equivalent of the outer part of our solar system and even free floating planets. Um the Roman coronagraph is uh is designed as a technology demonstration. Um so its primary purpose is to demonstrate um the technologies needed for a future mission to um focus on um direct measurements of uh uh extra solar planets. Obviously the best way of demonstrating performance for a coronagraph on a path to finding planets around other stars is to find planets around other stars with that coronagraph. Um but the overall um performance is a little bit more uncertain and I'm not that familiar with the specifics of what we are guaranteed to learn from um uh from observations with our chronograph just that it's very exciting >> and we'll now move to Manuel Mazanti with explor.

[01:00:44]Thank you so much with U Roman is going to send us tons of information to Nikki. I think you you mentioned 1.4 terabytes terabytes per day and I understand that the agency is going to use a platform called Roman research nexus. Can someone briefly explain how does it work? And I'm assuming research around the world or scientists will will have access to it.

[01:01:10]And is NASA going to use any kind of AI tool or software that would help scientists to better process all this information? Thank you.

[01:01:21]>> Okay, that there is a lot in um in those questions. Um so um the data archive for Roman is among the largest in um space-based um astrophysics um and requires a slightly different approach to using it. So our model is that uh we archived the data in the cloud and people access the data through um through a science platform.

[01:01:50]Um so you come log into the science platform um your ina Roman specific environment it's easy to access the data it's easy to visualize the data it's easy to use the data and that facility is open to everybody um so for the earlier question on um how can young people get excited um about Roman you can get excited about Roman by being on the forefront a class in Kentucky can see Roman data at the same time as a professor in Princeton. Um, and your access to that data is through the Roman research nexus. That same environment also supports um researchers um all across uh all across the country um where we're working hard to facilitate easy quick access to the data where you're not wasting time downloading thing uh things and then discovering that your lap that the CPU on your laptop wasn't sufficient to do anything with it.

[01:02:48]So the second part of your question on AI with Roman um I personally I think that the field of AI is moving so fast um that any answer that I gave now would probably not be representative of where the field is in a year and what we're actually doing with it. We are using slices of AI and machine learning in a variety of different scientific uh things that we're doing with Roman.

[01:03:16]We're exploring the possibility of agent pipelines where you have AI assisted assist you with getting to the right place with your analysis so that a grad student doesn't waste time with uh with minutia and gets you know straight to the interesting parts of of an analysis.

[01:03:34]But I think there is a very good chance that a deep rich large data data set is almost a poster child for being exploited extremely effectively with uh with AI. And that doesn't mean that the humans are out of the loop. It just means that you let the computers do the hard work and then the exciting uh physics bubbles uh to the top for the astronomers and the scientists and the country at large to enjoy.

[01:04:03]We're gonna take one last question from Ken Chang of the New York Times.

[01:04:09]>> Hi, thank you. Um, this is for Jamie, I guess. Julie, I was wondering, can you give me examples of what you did better and different than the earlier space telescopes that weren't ahead of schedule and um under budget? Um, was there something on the front end where you didn't rely on technologies that weren't ready yet? Or can you give me examples of problems that popped up but you able to, you know, fix them before they became big problems that delayed everything? Thank you.

[01:04:45]>> Okay. Um, let's see. Well, I I'll say a few things. Um uh another another two biggie uh things in terms of uh what led to our success. Uh the first was the architecture the overall architecture in the in the very beginning. Um this this observatory was was architected by the team here and um basically it was known going in that this was going to be a cost cap mission and that uh the programmatics were going to be um a major part of the success criteria. It wasn't just the the technical scientific performance. And so there was a lot of work early on put early on put in by the team to basically architect something that was achievable. There were stretches in places but it was they were known stretches. Um those were um handled you know in in in the early years in the technology development like the detectors the the funding the resources were put in there to to accelerate those developments and make sure that they were ready once we get to you know larger stages of integration.

[01:05:55]So, that was key. Um, and another key was um was stability from from I'll say downtown. Um, you know, it's it's hard to do a a project the big especially when it's really big. Um, if you don't have stability and if your funding is going up and down all over the place and uh you can't plan from year to year, it makes it really hard to succeed. And so we've been uh very fortunate that our stakeholders both at headquarters and and and in Congress have entrusted us to the resources that we said we need. And I like to say everybody held up their end of the bargain, right? We we delivered. We year after year we did what we said we were going to do. Um and uh and the resources and the and the support from uh from them was was always there. And so that's it's really a nice way to do it, right? It's it's it's it's less controversial. Uh it makes it a lot easier to be successful. So that was that was key as well.

[01:06:59]>> And that concludes this afternoon's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope briefing. Thank you all for your participation both in this and throughout today. And please follow Roman's journey at nasa.gov/roman.