By: Office of Rep. Don Beyer
February 17, 2021
Late last week, Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology elected Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) to serve as Chair of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics for the 117th Congress.
“I am humbled and honored to have been selected as the Chairman for the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee,” said Beyer. “Over the last year, we witnessed some of the most impactful moments for U.S. space exploration in decades. As someone who has long supported NASA’s important work on earth sciences, I am also excited to advance a climate-driven agenda, working hand in hand with NASA’s new climate advisor and advancing research into cleaner modes of flight. I am eager to boldly go forward with this important work with my colleagues in the 117th Congress for an ambitious space and aeronautics agenda.”
NASA s Roman Mission Will Probe Galaxy s Core for Hot Jupiters, Brown Dwarfs
When it launches in the mid-2020s, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will explore an expansive range of infrared astrophysics topics. One eagerly anticipated survey will use a gravitational effect called microlensing to reveal thousands of worlds that are similar to the planets in our solar system. Now, a new study shows that the same survey will also unveil more extreme planets and planet-like bodies in the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, thanks to their gravitational tug on the stars they orbit.
“We were thrilled to discover that Roman will be able to offer even more information about the planets throughout our galaxy than originally planned,” said Shota Miyazaki, a graduate student at Osaka University in Japan who led the study. “It will be very exciting to learn more about a new, unstudied batch of worlds.”
1. Four thousand exoplanets have been found in just 30 years. How is that possible?
The short answer: The 25-year-old paper that won the Nobel Prize in 2019 convinced scientists that they already had the tools to see exoplanets – then the discoveries kept rolling in.
Macintosh: Many people thought that other solar systems were like our own – a few small rocky planets closer to the sun, and some giant planets further out – and that it would, therefore, be nearly impossible to find exoplanets because our tools aren’t sensitive enough to see into those kinds of systems. This was such a popular idea that people working in the field early on had trouble getting access to telescopes and funding.
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VIDEO: Illustration depicting a brown dwarf, which range from about 4,000 to 25,000 times Earth s mass. They re too heavy to be characterized as planets, but not quite massive enough to undergo. view more
Credit: NASA s Goddard Space Flight Center
When it launches in the mid-2020s, NASA s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will explore an expansive range of infrared astrophysics topics. One eagerly anticipated survey will use a gravitational effect called microlensing to reveal thousands of worlds that are similar to the planets in our solar system. Now, a new study shows that the same survey will also unveil more extreme planets and planet-like bodies in the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, thanks to their gravitational tug on the stars they orbit.
Shane McGlaun - Jan 24, 2021, 10:29am CST
The Hubble space telescope has been in orbit for decades, and while still extremely useful, it’s aging, and NASA is preparing to replace it. One of the key observations that the Hubble space telescope makes are images known as Hubble ultra-deep fields. The upcoming Roman space telescope will be much more capable of taking ultra deep field images than Hubble.
The Roman space telescope will be able to image 100 Hubble ultra deep fields at the same time. Hubble has been capturing ultra deep Field images since 1995. The first one aimed the space telescope at a blank patch of sky for ten days capturing a Deep Field image with thousands of previously unseen galaxies inside.