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By NASA
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help scientists better understand our Milky Way galaxy’s less sparkly components — gas and dust strewn between stars, known as the interstellar medium.
One of Roman’s major observing programs, called the Galactic Plane Survey, will peer through our galaxy to its most distant edge, mapping roughly 20 billion stars—about four times more than have currently been mapped. Scientists will use data from these stars to study and map the dust their light travels through, contributing to the most complete picture yet of the Milky Way’s structure, star formation, and the origins of our solar system.
Our Milky Way galaxy is home to more than 100 billion stars that are often separated by trillions of miles. The spaces in between, called the interstellar medium, aren’t empty — they’re sprinkled with gas and dust that are both the seeds of new stars and the leftover crumbs from stars long dead. Studying the interstellar medium with observatories like NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will reveal new insight into the galactic dust recycling system.
Credit: NASA/Laine Havens; Music credit: Building Heroes by Enrico Cacace [BMI], Universal Production Music “With Roman, we’ll be able to turn existing artist’s conceptions of the Milky Way into more data-driven models using new constraints on the 3D distribution of interstellar dust,” said Catherine Zucker, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Solving Milky Way mystery
Scientists know how our galaxy likely looks by combining observations of the Milky Way and other spiral galaxies. But dust clouds make it hard to work out the details on the opposite side of our galaxy. Imagine trying to map a neighborhood while looking through the windows of a house surrounded by a dense fog.
Roman will see through the “fog” of dust using a specialized camera and filters that observe infrared light — light with longer wavelengths than our eyes can detect. Infrared light is more likely to pass through dust clouds without scattering.
This artist’s concept visualizes different types of light moving through a cloud of particles. Since infrared light has a longer wavelength, it can pass more easily through the dust. That means astronomers observing in infrared light can peer deeper into dusty regions.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Light with shorter wavelengths, including blue light produced by stars, more easily scatters. That means stars shining through dust appear dimmer and redder than they actually are.
By comparing the observations with information on the source star’s characteristics, astronomers can disentangle the star’s distance from how much its colors have been reddened. Studying those effects reveals clues about the dust’s properties.
“I can ask, ‘how much redder and dimmer is the starlight that Roman detects at different wavelengths?’ Then, I can take that information and relate it back to the properties of the dust grains themselves, and in particular their size,” said Brandon Hensley, a scientist who studies interstellar dust at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
Scientists will also learn about the dust’s composition and probe clouds to investigate the physical processes behind changing dust properties.
Clues in dust-influenced starlight hint at the amount of dust between us and a star. Piecing together results from many stars allows astronomers to construct detailed 3D dust maps. That would enable scientists like Zucker to create a model of the Milky Way, which will show us how it looks from the outside. Then scientists can better compare the Milky Way with other galaxies that we only observe from the outside, slotting it into a cosmological perspective of galaxy evolution.
“Roman will add a whole new dimension to our understanding of the galaxy because we’ll see billions and billions more stars,” Zucker said. “Once we observe the stars, we’ll have the dust data as well because its effects are encoded in every star Roman detects.”
Galactic life cycles
The interstellar medium does more than mill about the Milky Way — it fuels star and planet formation. Dense blobs of interstellar medium form molecular clouds, which can gravitationally collapse and kick off the first stages of star development. Young stars eject hot winds that can cause surrounding dust to clump into planetary building blocks.
“Dust carries a lot of information about our origins and how everything came to be,” said Josh Peek, an associate astronomer and head of the data science mission office at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “Right now, we’re basically standing on a really large dust grain — Earth was built out of lots and lots of really tiny grains that grew together into a giant ball.”
Roman will identify young clusters of stars in new, distant star-forming regions as well as contribute data on “star factories” previously identified by missions like NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope.
“If you want to understand star formation in different environments, you have to understand the interstellar landscape that seeds it,” Zucker said. “Roman will allow us to link the 3D structure of the interstellar medium with the 3D distribution of young stars across the galaxy’s disk.”
Roman’s new 3D dust maps will refine our understanding of the Milky Way’s spiral structure, the pinwheel-like pattern where stars, gas, and dust bunch up like galactic traffic jams. By combining velocity data with dust maps, scientists will compare observations with predictions from models to help identify the cause of spiral structure—currently unclear.
The role that this spiral pattern plays in star formation remains similarly uncertain. Some theories suggest that galactic congestion triggers star formation, while others contend that these traffic jams gather material but do not stimulate star birth.
Roman will help to solve mysteries like these by providing more data on dusty regions across the entire Milky Way. That will enable scientists to compare many galactic environments and study star birth in specific structures, like the galaxy’s winding spiral arms or its central stellar bar.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will conduct a Galactic Plane Survey to explore our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The survey will map around 20 billion stars, each encoding information about intervening dust and gas called the interstellar medium. Studying the interstellar medium could offer clues about our galaxy’s spiral arms, galactic recycling, and much more.
Credit: NASA, STScI, Caltech/IPAC The astronomy community is currently in the final stages of planning for Roman’s Galactic Plane Survey.
“With Roman’s massive survey of the galactic plane, we’ll be able to have this deep technical understanding of our galaxy,” Peek said.
After processing, Roman’s data will be available to the public online via the Roman Research Nexus and the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, which will each provide open access to the data for years to come.
“People who aren’t born yet are going to be able to do really cool analyses of this data,” Peek said. “We have a really beautiful piece of our heritage to hand down to future generations and to celebrate.”
Roman is slated to launch no later than May 2027, with the team working toward a potential early launch as soon as fall 2026.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
Download additional images and video from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio.
For more information about the Roman Space Telescope, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/roman
By Laine Havens
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Sep 16, 2025 EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
A scanning electron microscope image of a micrometeorite impact crater in a particle of asteroid Bennu material. Credits: NASA/Zia Rahman 5 min read
NASA’s Bennu Samples Reveal Complex Origins, Dramatic Transformation
Asteroid Bennu, sampled by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission in 2023, is a mixture of dust that formed in our solar system, organic matter from interstellar space, and pre-solar system stardust. Its unique and varied contents were dramatically transformed over time by interactions with water and exposure to the harsh space environment.
These insights come from a trio of newly published papers based on the analysis of Bennu samples by scientists at NASA and other institutions.
Bennu is made of fragments from a larger parent asteroid destroyed by a collision in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. One of the papers, co-led by Jessica Barnes at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and Ann Nguyen of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and published in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggests that Bennu’s ancestor was made up of material that had diverse origins—near the Sun, far from the Sun, and even beyond our solar system.
The analyses show that some of the materials in the parent asteroid, despite very low odds, escaped various chemical processes driven by heat and water and even survived the extremely energetic collision that broke it apart and formed Bennu.
“We traced the origins of these initial materials accumulated by Bennu’s ancestor,” said Nguyen. “We found stardust grains with compositions that predate the solar system, organic matter that likely formed in interstellar space, and high temperature minerals that formed closer to the Sun. All of these constituents were transported great distances to the region that Bennu’s parent asteroid formed.”
The chemical and atomic similarities of samples from Bennu, the asteroid Ryugu (sampled by JAXA’s (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission) and the most chemically primitive meteorites collected on Earth suggest their parent asteroids may have formed in a similar, distant region of the early solar system. Yet the differences from Ryugu and meteorites that were seen in the Bennu samples may indicate that this region changed over time or did not mix as well as some scientists have thought.
We found stardust grains with compositions that predate the solar system, organic matter that likely formed in interstellar space, and high temperature minerals that formed closer to the Sun.
Ann Nguyen
Planetary Scientist
Though some original constituents survived, most of Bennu’s materials were transformed by reactions with water, as reported in the paper co-led by Tom Zega of the University of Arizona and Tim McCoy of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington and published in Nature Geoscience. In fact, minerals in the parent asteroid likely formed, dissolved, and reformed over time.
“Bennu’s parent asteroid accumulated ice and dust. Eventually that ice melted, and the resulting liquid reacted with the dust to form what we see today, a sample that is 80% minerals that contain water,” said Zega. “We think the parent asteroid accumulated a lot of icy material from the outer solar system, and then all it needed was a little bit of heat to melt the ice and cause liquids to react with solids.”
Bennu’s transformation did not end there. The third paper, co-led by Lindsay Keller at NASA Johnson and Michelle Thompson of Purdue University, also published in Nature Geoscience, found microscopic craters and tiny splashes of once-molten rock – known as impact melts – on the sample surfaces, signs that the asteroid was bombarded by micrometeorites. These impacts, together with the effects of solar wind, are known as space weathering and occurred because Bennu has no atmosphere to protect it.
“The surface weathering at Bennu is happening a lot faster than conventional wisdom would have it, and the impact melt mechanism appears to dominate, contrary to what we originally thought,” said Keller. “Space weathering is an important process that affects all asteroids, and with returned samples, we can tease out the properties controlling it and use that data and extrapolate it to explain the surface and evolution of asteroid bodies that we haven’t visited.”
Ann Nguyen, co-lead author of a new paper that gives insights into the diverse origin of asteroid Bennu’s “parent” asteroid works alongside the NanoSIMS 50L (nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry) ion microprobe in the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Credit: NASA/James Blair As the leftover materials from planetary formation 4.5 billion years ago, asteroids provide a record of the solar system’s history. But as Zega noted, we’re seeing that some of these remnants differ from what has been found in meteorites on Earth, because certain types of asteroids burn up in the atmosphere and never make it to the ground. That, the researchers point out, is why collecting actual samples is so important.
“The samples are really crucial for this work,” Barnes said. “We could only get the answers we got because of the samples. It’s super exciting that we’re finally able to see these things about an asteroid that we’ve been dreaming of going to for so long.”
The next samples NASA expects to help unravel our solar system’s story will be Moon rocks returned by the Artemis III astronauts.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center provided overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission’s science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provided flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace were responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx takes place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from the Canadian Space Agency and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
Melissa Gaskill
Johnson Space Center
For more information on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/osiris-rex/
Karen Fox / Molly Wasser
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / molly.l.wasser@nasa.gov
Victoria Segovia
Johnson Space Center
(281) 483-5111
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By NASA
Explore This Section Science For Educators NUBE: New Card Game Helps… Overview Learning Resources Science Activation Teams SME Map Opportunities More Science Activation Stories Citizen Science 4 min read
NUBE: New Card Game Helps Learners Identify Cloud Types Through Play
Different clouds types can have different effects on our weather and climate, which makes identifying cloud types important – but learning to identify cloud types can be tricky! Educational games make the learning process easier and more enjoyable for learners of all ages and create an opportunity for families and friends to spend quality time together.
The NASA Science Activation Program’s NASA Earth Science Education Collaborative (NESEC) and the Queens Public Library co-developed a new Global Learning & Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) card game called NUBE (pronounced noo-beh) – the Spanish word for cloud. During this fun, interactive game, players match cards by cloud type or sky color – with 11 cloud types and 5 shades of blue (in real life, sky color can be an indication of how many aerosols are in the atmosphere). There are also special cards in the deck, such as Rainmakers, which change the order of play; Obscurations, which require the next player to draw two cards; and Mystery cards, which require players to give hints while other players guess the cloud type. By playing the game, participants practice learning the names of clouds while they begin to appreciate the differences in cloud type and sky color.
NESEC is collaborating with another NASA Science Activation project team – NASA@ My Library (NAML, led by the Space Science Institute, SSI – to get the game into library programs. NAML recruited and is distributing sets of two or four card decks to 292 U.S. libraries. Participating libraries are located in 45 states, with a large number (>50%) serving rural communities. SSI also promoted the opportunity to its network of libraries and co-presented a webinar with NESEC for interested libraries. Library applications described how they plan to use the game with their patrons, including programs for audiences ranging from kids to seniors related to weather and safety programs, citizen science clubs, home school groups, summer reading, game nights, circulating kits and more. Libraries that receive NUBE commit to use the game in at least one program and complete a short evaluation survey.
NUBE evolved through several iterations as staff from several Queens Public Library branches tested the game with different age groups, from young kids to teens and adults. The game was also tested at the Challenger Center and the Center for Science, Technology, Education, & Mathematics (STEM) Teaching and Learning at Northern Arizona University. Alex Hernandez Bonifacio, an early Learning Educator at Queens Public Library reported, “It was amazing to see what kids reflected on as they were playing NUBE. For example, there was this third grader who was surprised to realize something could obscure our view of the clouds. She used to think clouds were too high in the sky for anything to block our view of them. While playing NUBE, she became very intrigued about the obscuration cards, and she realized that things closer to the ground like heavy snow could in fact block our view of the clouds!” After incorporating feedback from testers and counting the votes for different graphic design options, NUBE is now ready to be downloaded and enjoyed by all!
If you’re excited to play this awesome GLOBE Clouds card game and want to learn even more about clouds, you can download the GLOBE Observer app on your smartphone to participate in hands-on NASA scientific research – sharing observations of your environment as a citizen scientist (no citizenship required)! Learn more and discover additional resources for engaging in clouds activities with the GLOBE Observer Clouds Toolkit.
NESEC, led by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) and supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number NNX16AE28A, is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about how Science Activation connects NASA science experts, real content, and experiences with community leaders to do science in ways that activate minds and promote deeper understanding of our world and beyond: https://science.nasa.gov/learn
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Arsia Mons, an ancient Martian volcano, was captured before dawn on May 2, 2025, by NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter while the spacecraft was studying the Red Planet’s atmosphere, which appears here as a greenish haze.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU The 2001 Odyssey spacecraft captured a first-of-its-kind look at Arsia Mons, which dwarfs Earth’s tallest volcanoes.
A new panorama from NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter shows one of the Red Planet’s biggest volcanoes, Arsia Mons, poking through a canopy of clouds just before dawn. Arsia Mons and two other volcanoes form what is known as the Tharsis Montes, or Tharsis Mountains, which are often surrounded by water ice clouds (as opposed to Mars’ equally common carbon dioxide clouds), especially in the early morning. This panorama marks the first time one of the volcanoes has been imaged on the planet’s horizon, offering the same perspective of Mars that astronauts have of the Earth when they peer down from the International Space Station.
Launched in 2001, Odyssey is the longest-running mission orbiting another planet, and this new panorama represents the kind of science the orbiter began pursuing in 2023, when it captured the first of its now four high-altitude images of the Martian horizon. To get them, the spacecraft rotates 90 degrees while in orbit so that its camera, built to study the Martian surface, can snap the image.
Arsia Mons is the southernmost of the three volcanoes that make up Tharsis Montes, shown in the center of this cropped topographic map of Mars. Olympus Mons, the solar system’s largest volcano, is at upper left. The western end of Valles Marineris begins cutting its wide swath across the planet at lower right.NASA/JPL-Caltech The angle allows scientists to see dust and water ice cloud layers, while the series of images enables them to observe changes over the course of seasons.
“We’re seeing some really significant seasonal differences in these horizon images,” said planetary scientist Michael D. Smith of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s giving us new clues to how Mars’ atmosphere evolves over time.”
Understanding Mars’ clouds is particularly important for understanding the planet’s weather and how phenomena like dust storms occur. That information, in turn, can benefit future missions, including entry, descent and landing operations.
Volcanic Giants
While these images focus on the upper atmosphere, the Odyssey team has tried to include interesting surface features in them, as well. In Odyssey’s latest horizon image, captured on May 2, Arsia Mons stands 12 miles (20 kilometers) high, roughly twice as tall as Earth’s largest volcano, Mauna Loa, which rises 6 miles (9 kilometers) above the seafloor.
The southernmost of the Tharsis volcanoes, Arsia Mons is the cloudiest of the three. The clouds form when air expands as it blows up the sides of the mountain and then rapidly cools. They are especially thick when Mars is farthest from the Sun, a period called aphelion. The band of clouds that forms across the planet’s equator at this time of year is called the aphelion cloud belt, and it’s on proud display in Odyssey’s new panorama.
“We picked Arsia Mons hoping we would see the summit poke above the early morning clouds. And it didn’t disappoint,” said Jonathon Hill of Arizona State University in Tempe, operations lead for Odyssey’s camera, called the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS.
The THEMIS camera can view Mars in both visible and infrared light. The latter allows scientists to identify areas of the subsurface that contain water ice, which could be used by the first astronauts to land on Mars. The camera can also image Mars’ tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, allowing scientists to analyze their surface composition.
More About Odyssey
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Odyssey Project for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the spacecraft and collaborates with JPL on mission operations. THEMIS was built and is operated by Arizona State University in Tempe.
For more about Odyssey:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/odyssey/
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