2 Adler Planetarium staff invited to watch Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launch

The Hubble and Webb will soon have a new neighbor from NASA.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch this weekend.

Long before Galileo, humans were stargazers. Our telescopes have just gotten bigger and better.

At the Adler Planetarium, Geza Gyuk, senior director of astronomy, and Hunter Miller, public observing educator, are especially excited about one telescope that's not in their collection — the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The Roman telescope is named after NASA's first chief astronomer.

"Frequently thought of as the godmother of Hubble, actually. Very, very involved in getting Hubble launched," Gyuk said 

Roman is equipped with a 300-megapixel infrared camera, with a field of view 100 times larger than Hubble's.

"So, it will image over a billion different galaxies, potentially discover as many as over 100,000 new exoplanets that were never known previously," Miller said.

The telescope will help astronomers explore mysterious dark matter and dark energy.

"We can see the effects of this dark matter and this dark energy, but what exactly they are isn't explained yet," Miller said.

Roman will join the Webb telescope – which has a narrower view but more powerful vision.

"I mean, they're beautifully complementary," Gyuk said.

Roman is set to launch Aug. 30, but Gyuk and Miller take off Friday, which they say is their first trip together. For Miller, it will be his first-ever launch and the first for Gyuk at Cape Canaveral. 

NASA invited the pair from Adler to see the launch up close.

"Personally, I'm excited to, like, feel the blast when it launches," Miller said.

"I was like, 'Yes!' I was like, it doesn't matter what else I have planned, you know. I'm going on this," Gyuk said.

As Roman rockets away, Earth will anxiously await what it sends back.

NASA expects to capture and release the first images from Roman toward the end of the year.