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By NASA
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be a discovery machine, thanks to its wide field of view and resulting torrent of data. Scheduled to launch no later than May 2027, with the team working toward launch as early as fall 2026, its near-infrared Wide Field Instrument will capture an area 200 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope’s infrared camera, and with the same image sharpness and sensitivity. Roman will devote about 75% of its science observing time over its five-year primary mission to conducting three core community surveys that were defined collaboratively by the scientific community. One of those surveys will scour the skies for things that pop, flash, and otherwise change, like exploding stars and colliding neutron stars.
These two images, taken one year apart by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, show how the supernova designated SN 2018gv faded over time. The High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will spot thousands of supernovae, including a specific type that can be used to measure the expansion history of the universe.Credit: NASA, ESA, Martin Kornmesser (ESA), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Hubble), Adam G. Riess (STScI, JHU), SH0ES Team Called the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey, this program will peer outside of the plane of our Milky Way galaxy (i.e., high galactic latitudes) to study objects that change over time. The survey’s main goal is to detect tens of thousands of a particular type of exploding star known as type Ia supernovae. These supernovae can be used to study how the universe has expanded over time.
“Roman is designed to find tens of thousands of type Ia supernovae out to greater distances than ever before,” said Masao Sako of the University of Pennsylvania, who served as co-chair of the committee that defined the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey. “Using them, we can measure the expansion history of the universe, which depends on the amount of dark matter and dark energy. Ultimately, we hope to understand more about the nature of dark energy.”
Probing Dark Energy
Type Ia supernovae are useful as cosmological probes because astronomers know their intrinsic luminosity, or how bright they inherently are, at their peak. By comparing this with their observed brightness, scientists can determine how far away they are. Roman will also be able to measure how quickly they appear to be moving away from us. By tracking how fast they’re receding at different distances, scientists will trace cosmic expansion over time.
Only Roman will be able to find the faintest and most distant supernovae that illuminate early cosmic epochs. It will complement ground-based telescopes like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, which are limited by absorption from Earth’s atmosphere, among other effects. Rubin’s greatest strength will be in finding supernovae that happened within the past 5 billion years. Roman will expand that collection to much earlier times in the universe’s history, about 3 billion years after the big bang, or as much as 11 billion years in the past. This would more than double the measured timeline of the universe’s expansion history.
Recently, the Dark Energy Survey found hints that dark energy may be weakening over time, rather than being a constant force of expansion. Roman’s investigations will be critical for testing this possibility.
Seeking Exotic Phenomena
To detect transient objects, whose brightness changes over time, Roman must revisit the same fields at regular intervals. The High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will devote a total of 180 days of observing time to these observations spread over a five-year period. Most will occur over a span of two years in the middle of the mission, revisiting the same fields once every five days, with an additional 15 days of observations early in the mission to establish a baseline.
This infographic describes the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey that will be conducted by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The survey’s main component will cover over 18 square degrees — a region of sky as large as 90 full moons — and see supernovae that occurred up to about 8 billion years ago.Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center “To find things that change, we use a technique called image subtraction,” Sako said. “You take an image, and you subtract out an image of the same piece of sky that was taken much earlier — as early as possible in the mission. So you remove everything that’s static, and you’re left with things that are new.”
The survey will also include an extended component that will revisit some of the observing fields approximately every 120 days to look for objects that change over long timescales. This will help to detect the most distant transients that existed as long ago as one billion years after the big bang. Those objects vary more slowly due to time dilation caused by the universe’s expansion.
“You really benefit from taking observations over the entire five-year duration of the mission,” said Brad Cenko of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the other co-chair of the survey committee. “It allows you to capture these very rare, very distant events that are really hard to get at any other way but that tell us a lot about the conditions in the early universe.”
This extended component will collect data on some of the most energetic and longest-lasting transients, such as tidal disruption events — when a supermassive black hole shreds a star — or predicted but as-yet unseen events known as pair-instability supernovae, where a massive star explodes without leaving behind a neutron star or black hole.
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This sonification that uses simulated data from NASA’s OpenUniverse project shows the variety of explosive events that will be detected by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and its High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey. Different sounds represent different types of events, as shown in the key at right. A single kilonova seen about 12 seconds into the video is represented with a cannon shot. The sonification sweeps backward in time to greater distances from Earth, and the pitch of the instrument gets lower as you move outward. (Cosmological redshift has been converted to a light travel time expressed in billions of years.) Credit: Sonification: Martha Irene Saladino (STScI), Christopher Britt (STScI); Visualization: Frank Summers (STScI); Designer: NASA, STScI, Leah Hustak (STScI) Survey Details
The High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will be split into two imaging “tiers” — a wide tier that covers more area and a deep tier that will focus on a smaller area for a longer time to detect fainter objects. The wide tier, totaling a bit more than 18 square degrees, will target objects within the past 7 billion years, or half the universe’s history. The deep tier, covering an area of 6.5 square degrees, will reach fainter objects that existed as much as 10 billion years ago. The observations will take place in two areas, one in the northern sky and one in the southern sky. There will also be a spectroscopic component to this survey, which will be limited to the southern sky.
“We have a partnership with the ground-based Subaru Observatory, which will do spectroscopic follow-up of the northern sky, while Roman will do spectroscopy in the southern sky. With spectroscopy, we can confidently tell what type of supernovae we’re seeing,” said Cenko.
Together with Roman’s other two core community surveys, the High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey and the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey, the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will help map the universe with a clarity and to a depth never achieved before.
Download the sonification here.
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 in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, 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 Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
By Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated Aug 12, 2025 EditorAshley BalzerLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4600-4601: Up and Over the Sand Covered Ramp
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on July 13, 2025 — Sol 4598, or Martian day 4,598 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 15:24:10 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Sharon Wilson Purdy, Planetary Geologist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Earth planning date: Monday, July 14, 2025
The Curiosity rover continues to navigate through the region of Mount Sharp characterized by the boxwork terrain. After successfully completing a drive of about 34 meters over the weekend (about 112 feet), the rover parked near the edge of a smooth, sandy stretch at the base of a ridge that leads to the most prominent and complex network of boxwork structures seen so far.
Due to the lack of exposed bedrock in the immediate workspace, the science team opted to give some of the rover’s contact science instruments a break. With the dust removal tool (DRT) and APXS instruments stowed, the extra energy allowed the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to take high resolution images of “Playa de la Gallina” to survey the uniform, smooth surface consisting of sand and pebble-sized material.
The ChemCam and Mastcam teams scheduled several observations in this two-sol plan that further investigated the rocks and structures in our immediate vicinity and surroundings. ChemCam LIBS was used to target “El Olivo” to determine the chemistry of the bumpy textured bedrock near the rover, which was also imaged by a Mastcam stereo mosaic. Additional Mastcam stereo mosaics include fractures at “El Corral” and linear troughs at “Chapare.” Further away, ChemCam’s Remote Micro Imager (RMI) will provide insight into an intriguing section of scoured features within the Mishe Mokwa butte.
The environmental working group continues to keep an eye in the sky and planned a supra-horizon movie and a dust-devil survey as part of their ongoing monitoring campaign of the atmospheric conditions in Gale Crater.
The 21-meter-long drive (about 69 feet) at the end of this plan will maneuver the rover past the sandy ramp to the top of the main boxwork region. From here, the science team will be able to explore this fascinating area of particularly large boxwork structures. Stay tuned as Curiosity continues to climb higher and delve deeper into the geologic history of Mars!
For more Curiosity blog posts, visit MSL Mission Updates
Learn more about Curiosity’s science instruments
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6 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA instruments and aircraft are helping identify potential sources of critical minerals across vast swaths of California, Nevada, and other Western states. Pilots gear up to reach altitudes about twice as high as those of a cruising passenger jet.NASA NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey have been mapping the planets since Apollo. One team is searching closer to home for minerals critical to national security and the economy.
If not for the Joshua trees, the tan hills of Cuprite, Nevada, would resemble Mars. Scalded and chemically altered by water from deep underground, the rocks here are earthly analogs for understanding ancient Martian geology. The hills are also rich with minerals. They’ve lured prospectors for more than 100 years and made Cuprite an ideal place to test NASA technology designed to map the minerals, craters, crusts, and ices of our solar system.
Sensors that discovered lunar water, charted Saturn’s moons, even investigated ground zero in New York City were all tested and calibrated at Cuprite, said Robert Green, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. He’s honed instruments in Nevada for decades.
One of Green’s latest projects is to find and map rocky surfaces in the American West that could contain minerals crucial to the nation’s economy and security. Currently, the U.S. is dependent on imports of 50 critical minerals, which include lithium and rare earth elements used in everything from rechargeable batteries to medicine.
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are searching nationwide for domestic sources. NASA is contributing to this effort with high-altitude aircraft and sensors capable of detecting the molecular fingerprints of minerals across vast, treeless expanses in wavelengths of light not visible to human eyes.
The hills of Cuprite, Nevada, appear pink and tan to the eye (top image) but they shine with mica, gypsum, and alunite among other types of minerals when imaged spectroscopically (lower image). NASA sensors used to study Earth and other rocky worlds have been tested there.USGS/Ray Kokaly The collaboration is called GEMx, the Geological Earth Mapping Experiment, and it’s likely the largest airborne spectroscopic survey in U.S. history. Since 2023, scientists working on GEMx have charted more than 190,000 square miles (500,000 square kilometers) of North American soil.
Mapping Partnership Started During Apollo
As NASA instruments fly in aircraft 60,000 feet (18,000 meters) overhead, Todd Hoefen, a geophysicist, and his colleagues from USGS work below. The samples of rock they test and collect in the field are crucial to ensuring that the airborne observations match reality on the ground and are not skewed by the intervening atmosphere.
The GEMx mission marks the latest in a long history of partnerships between NASA and USGS. The two agencies have worked together to map rocky worlds — and keep astronauts and rovers safe — since the early days of the space race.
For example, geologic maps of the Moon made in the early 1960s at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona, helped Apollo mission planners select safe and scientifically promising sites for the six crewed landings that occurred from 1969 to 1972. Before stepping onto the lunar surface, NASA’s Moon-bound astronauts traveled to Flagstaff to practice fieldwork with USGS geologists. A version of those Apollo boot camps continues today with astronauts and scientists involved in NASA’s Artemis mission.
Geophysicist Raymond Kokaly, who leads the GEMx campaign for USGS, is pictured here conducting ground-based hyperspectral imaging of rock in Cuprite, Nevada, in April 2019.USGS/Todd Hoefen The GEMx mission marks the latest in a long history of partnerships between NASA and USGS. The two agencies have worked together to map rocky worlds — and keep astronauts and rovers safe — since the early days of the space race.
Rainbows and Rocks
To detect minerals and other compounds on the surfaces of rocky bodies across the solar system, including Earth, scientists use a technology pioneered by JPL in the 1980s called imaging spectroscopy. One of the original imaging spectrometers built by Robert Green and his team is central to the GEMx campaign in the Western U.S.
About the size and weight of a minifridge and built to fly on planes, the instrument is called AVIRIS-Classic, short for Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer. Like all imaging spectrometers, it takes advantage of the fact that every molecule reflects and absorbs light in a unique pattern, like a fingerprint. Spectrometers detect these molecular fingerprints in the light bouncing off or emitted from a sample or a surface.
In the case of GEMx, that’s sunlight shimmering off different kinds of rocks.
Compared to a standard digital camera, which “sees” three color channels (red, green, and blue), imaging spectrometers can see more than 200 channels, including infrared wavelengths of light that are invisible to the human eye.
NASA spectrometers have orbited or flown by every major rocky body in our solar system. They’ve helped scientists investigate methane lakes on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and study Pluto’s thin atmosphere. One JPL-built spectrometer is currently en route to Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter, to help search for chemical ingredients necessary to support life.
“One of the cool things about NASA is that we develop technology to look out at the solar system and beyond, but we also turn around and look back down,” said Ben Phillips, a longtime NASA program manager who led GEMx until he retired in 2025.
The Newest Instrument
More than 200 hours of GEMx flights are scheduled through fall 2025. Scientists will process and validate the data, with the first USGS mineral maps to follow. During these flights, an ER-2 research aircraft from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, will cruise over the Western U.S. at altitudes twice as high as a passenger jet flies.
At such high altitudes, pilot Dean Neeley must wear a spacesuit similar to those used by astronauts. He flies solo in the cramped cockpit but will be accompanied by state-of-the-art NASA instruments. In the belly of the plane rides AVIRIS-Classic, which will be retiring soon after more than three decades in service. Carefully packed in the plane’s nose is its successor: AVIRIS-5, taking flight for the first time in 2025.
Together, the two instruments provide 10 times the performance of the older spectrometer alone, but even by itself AVIRIS-5 marks a leap forward. It can sample areas ranging from about 30 feet (10 meters) to less than a foot (30 centimeters).
“The newest generation of AVIRIS will more than live up to the original,” Green said.
More About GEMx
The GEMx research project will last four years and is funded by the USGS Earth Mapping Resources Initiative. The initiative will capitalize on both the technology developed by NASA for spectroscopic imaging, as well as the agency’s expertise in analyzing the datasets and extracting critical mineral information from them.
Data collected by GEMx is available here.
News Media Contacts
Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307
andrew.wang@jpl.nasa.gov / jane.j.lee@jpl.nasa.gov
Karen Fox / Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / elizabeth.a.vlock@nasa.gov
Written by Sally Younger
2025-086
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Last Updated Jul 10, 2025 Related Terms
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By USH
Some time ago, while visiting the Grand Canyon in Arizona, a photographer captured several short video clips of the landscape. In one of those clips, an unusual anomaly was discovered.
The original footage is only 1.9 seconds long, but within that moment, something remarkable was caught on camera. An unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) flashed across the frame, visible for less than a second, only noticeable when the video was paused and analyzed frame by frame.
The object was moving at an astonishing speed, covering an estimated two to three miles in under a second, far beyond the capabilities of any conventional aircraft, drone, or helicopter.
This isn’t the first time such anomalous flying objects have been observed. Their characteristics defy comparison with known aerial technology.
Some skeptics have proposed that the object might have been a rock thrown into the canyon from behind the camera. However, that explanation seems unlikely. Most people can only throw objects at speeds of 10 to 20 meters per second (approximately 22 to 45 mph). The velocity of this object far exceeded that range, and its near-invisibility in the unedited video suggests it was moving much faster.
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 4 min read
Sols 4549-4552: Keeping Busy Over the Long Weekend
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on May 23, 2025 — Sol 4548, or Martian day 4,548 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 07:17:19 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University
Earth planning date: Friday, May 23, 2025
In Wednesday’s mission update, Alex mentioned that this past Monday’s plan included a “marathon” drive of 45 meters (148 feet). Today, we found ourselves almost 70 meters (230 feet) from where we were on Wednesday. This was our longest drive since the truly enormous 97-meter (318-foot) drive back on sol 3744.
Today’s plan looks a little different from our usual weekend plans. Because of the U.S. Memorial Day holiday on Monday, the team will next assemble on Tuesday, so an extra sol had to be appended to the weekend plan. This extra sol is mostly being used for our next drive (about 42 meters or 138 feet), which means that all of the science that we have planned today can be done “targeted,” i.e., we know exactly where the rover is. As a result, we can use the instruments on our arm to poke at specific targets close to the rover, rather than filling our science time exclusively with remote sensing activities of farther-away features.
The rover’s power needs are continuing to dominate planning. Although we passed aphelion (the farthest distance Mars is from the Sun) a bit over a month ago and so are now getting closer to the Sun, we’re just about a week away from winter solstice in the southern hemisphere. This is the time of year when Gale Crater receives the least amount of light from the Sun, leading to particularly cold temperatures even during the day, and thus more power being needed to keep the rover and its instruments warm. On the bright side, being at the coldest time of the year means that we have only warmer sols to look forward to!
Given the need to keep strictly to our allotted power budget, everyone did a phenomenal job finding optimizations to ensure that we could fit as much science into this plan as possible. All together, we have over four hours of our usual targeted and remote sensing activities, as well as over 12 hours of overnight APXS integrations.
Mastcam is spending much of its time today looking off in the distance, particularly focusing on the potential boxwork structures that we’re driving towards. These structures get two dedicated mosaics, totaling 42 images between the two of them. Mastcam will also observe “Mishe Mokwa” (a small butte about 15 meters, or 49 feet, to our south) and some bedrock troughs in our workspace, and will take two tau observations to characterize the amount of dust in the atmosphere.
ChemCam has just one solo imaging-only observation in this plan: an RMI mosaic of Texoli butte off to our east. ChemCam will be collaborating with APXS to take some passive spectral observations (i.e., no LIBS) to measure the composition of the atmosphere. Mastcam and ChemCam will also be working together on observations of LIBS activities. This plan includes an extravagant three LIBS, on “Orocopia Mountains,” “Dripping Springs,” and “Mountain Center.” Both Mastcam and ChemCam also have a set of “dark” observations intended to characterize the performance of the instruments with no light on their sensors, something that’s very important for properly calibrating their measurements.
Our single set of arm activities includes APXS, DRT, and MAHLI activities on “Camino Del Mar” and “Mount Baden-Powell,” both of which are bedrock targets in our workspace.
Of course, I can’t forget to mention the collection of Navcam observations that we have in this plan to monitor the environment. These include a 360-degree survey looking for dust devils, two line-of-sight activities to measure the amount of dust in the air within Gale, and three cloud movies. As always, we’ve also got a typical collection of REMS, RAD, and DAN activities throughout.
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Last Updated May 27, 2025 Related Terms
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