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[Far and Wide Part 4: Teamwork]
The James Webb and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescopes are two missions with different, but overlapping, science goals. Both will help us understand the history of the universe and what other worlds exist in it now. They will bring us closer to answering fundamental questions like “where do we come from?” and “are we alone?”
No one telescope can make all the observations necessary to potentially answer these questions so NASA and its partners have created several.
Roman and Webb will be together not just in spirit, but also in their location in space. Both spacecraft will orbit a special place called Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, or L2, where the gravitational pull of the Earth and Sun reach equilibrium. Located a million miles beyond Earth’s orbit, a satellite at L2 orbits the Sun, with Earth’s gravity providing an extra tug to help it stay even with the planet.
The advantage of orbiting L2 is that both spacecraft will be far from any interference of the Earth, the Moon, or other spacecraft. Their orbits are huge, keeping them well away from each other or any other spacecraft at L2. It’s colder there, critical for infrared observations, and they never have Earth blocking most of their view. Hubble, orbiting only 300 miles above the ground, has more limitations on where it can point at any given time.
Because both telescopes will operate at the same time, they can work together to discover far more about the cosmos than either could learn alone. When Roman makes an intriguing exoplanet discovery, Webb may be able to follow up soon after, helping scientists learn more. When Roman detects a transient event, like a supernova, somewhere in its broad coverage, Webb can focus in to take deeper measurements. Should Webb find an interesting quirk in a nearby galaxy it is studying, Roman can provide context with thousands of galaxies around it.
Using the two telescopes in concert, both with unprecedented, but different, capabilities, scientists will be able to make more and faster progress than if only one telescope operated at a time. Two of the greatest space telescopes ever built will work together, using each other’s strengths, to advance our knowledge of the universe.
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[NASA]