Announcements

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope’s ‘Eyes’ Pass First Vision Test

Project News • April 17th, 2024

Engineers at L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York, have combined all 10 mirrors for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Preliminary tests show the newly aligned optics, collectively called the IOA (Imaging Optics Assembly), will direct light into Roman’s science instruments...

How NASA’s Roman Telescope Will Measure Ages of Stars

Project News • April 4th, 2024

Guessing your age might be a popular carnival game, but for astronomers it’s a real challenge to determine the ages of stars. Once a star like our Sun has settled into steady nuclear fusion, or the mature phase of its life, it changes little for billions of years. One exception to that rule is...

NEOWISE 2024 Data Release

Project News • March 21st, 2024

The Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) and IPAC at the California Institute of Technology announce the NEOWISE 2024 Data Release.

Discovering 3 Worlds All at Once!

Project News • March 19th, 2024

What's better than discovering an exoplanet? How about discovering THREE exoplanets...all at once! Early-career researcher Dr. Emily Gilbert talks about the exoplanet bonanza of the TOI-700 system that made headline news around the world in 2020. Emily also reveals her favorite fictional planet...

NASA’s Roman Team Selects Survey to Map Our Galaxy’s Far Side

Project News • March 12th, 2024

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has announced plans for an unprecedented survey of the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. It will peer deeper into this region than any other survey, mapping more of our galaxy’s stars than all previous observations combined.

IPAC Names Tracy Chen the New Task Lead of Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) Science Data System

IPAC News • February 15th, 2024

Dr. Tracy Chen, a member of IPAC since 2009, was appointed the new Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) Science Data System Lead, starting on January 2nd, 2024.

New NASA Mission will Study Ultraviolet Sky, Stars, Stellar Explosions

Project News • February 13th, 2024

As NASA explores the unknown in air and space, a new mission to survey ultraviolet light across the entire sky will provide the agency with more insight into how galaxies and stars evolve. The space telescope, called UVEX (UltraViolet EXplorer), is targeted to launch in 2030 as NASA’s next...

NASA’s Roman to Use Rare Events to Calculate Expansion Rate of Universe

Project News • February 7th, 2024

Astronomers investigating one of the most pressing mysteries of the cosmos – the rate at which the universe is expanding – are readying themselves to study this puzzle in a new way using NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Once it launches by May 2027, astronomers will mine Roman’s wide...

NASA Puts Next-Gen Exoplanet-Imaging Technology to the Test

Project News • January 31st, 2024

A cutting-edge tool to view planets outside our solar system has passed two key tests ahead of its launch as part of the agency’s Roman Space Telescope by 2027.

NASA’s Roman to Search for Signs of Dark Matter Clumps

Project News • January 18th, 2024

Some of the finest, smallest details in the universe – the gaps between elongated groups of stars – may soon help astronomers reveal dark matter in greater detail than ever before. After NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches, by May 2027, researchers will use its images to explore...