NASA’s new dark energy space telescope can also detect killer asteroids
| Source: MIT Technology Review AI
Tags: NASA, Roman Space Telescope, asteroid detection, planetary defense, infrared imaging
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launching late August with a 300-megapixel infrared camera 100 times wider than Hubble's, can be adapted via software modifications to detect asteroids as small as 60 feet — comparable to the 2013 Chelyabinsk impactor.
Details
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches from Kennedy Space Center at the end of August 2026. Its primary science mission targets dark matter, dark energy, and deep-field galaxy surveys covering over one billion galaxies. But a team of planetary scientists presenting at the Europlanet Science Congress in September argues that Roman is uniquely positioned for asteroid detection as a secondary mission. Roman's wide infrared field of view — roughly 100 times larger than Hubble — means it continuously scans through the solar system while imaging deep space. Asteroids appear as streaks in this data, which the current software discards as artifacts. With modified software to identify and analyze those streaks, the telescope could detect objects as small as 60 feet — the size class of the 2013 Chelyabinsk asteroid that injured 1,500 people when it exploded over Russia. The planetary defense pitch partly emerged from political motivation: researchers wanted to demonstrate additional mission value to protect Roman from Trump administration budget cuts in July 2025. Roman's asteroid capabilities would complement JWST, which can intensely focus on individual targets that wide-field surveys flag. The asteroid software modifications are proposed, not confirmed features. The findings will be presented at Europlanet Science Congress and have not yet been peer-reviewed.