NASA Is Launching a $4 Billion Space Telescope on Sunday. Here’s Why You Should Care

A revolutionary space telescope is ready to join the ranks of Hubble and Webb, capturing panoramic views of the cosmos to survey millions of galaxies, measure the expansion rate of the universe, and hunt down hundreds of alien worlds.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set for liftoff on Sunday at 7:26 a.m. ET aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch will be streamed live on NASA’s website , as well as the agency’s YouTube channel. You can also tune in through the feed below.

The $4 billion observatory is equipped with sharp infrared vision, combined with a field of view at least 100 times larger than the Hubble space telescope, according to NASA . Roman is tasked with solving some of the greatest mysteries of the universe: dark matter and dark energy. By surveying massive areas of the sky, the telescope will be able to track how galaxies are distributed throughout the universe and map the invisible dark matter.

NASA refers to Roman as Hubble’s wide-eyed cousin. While it has the same sensitivity as Hubble’s cameras, a single Roman image will hold the equivalent detail of 100 pictures from Hubble.

The new observatory has two main instruments: the Wide Field Instrument (WFI) and a Coronagraph Instrument. The 300-megapixel WFI is designed to take extremely sharp images across a huge field and measure very sensitive spectroscopic data.

Like the Webb Space Telescope, Roman captures the universe in infrared light. Webb has a much larger mirror and can look extremely deep into the universe, while Roman can see vast areas of the sky simultaneously.

Following its launch, the Roman telescope will travel to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, about one million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. From its high perch, the telescope will have an unobstructed view of the sky while maintaining a relatively stable orientation.

Once it’s up there, Roman has three major scientific missions: investigate dark matter, measure how the universe expands over time, and look for planets beyond our solar system.

Dark matter is the invisible glue that holds the universe together. While it makes up most of the matter found in galaxies and galaxy clusters, scientists are still not quite sure what it is. Since dark matter is invisible, it is nearly impossible to observe. It does, however, take up space and hold mass, so we can see how it interacts with and influences ordinary matter.

Roman will observe how galaxies cluster and how matter bends light through a phenomenon called weak gravitational ​lensing. The telescope will be used to scan about 12% of the sky high above our galactic plane to look for the lensing effect in millions of distant galaxies. By measuring tiny distortions across those galaxies, Roman may be able to map how dark matter is distributed throughout the universe.

Another mystery that scientists are hoping to resolve using the Roman telescope is the expansion rate of the universe.