NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will broaden its hunt for rogue planets and exoplanets when a next-generation space observatory is launched in a few years. According to the latest research, the telescope, which is expected to launch between October 2026 and May 2027, will be able to detect 400 such rogue planets with sizes equivalent to the mass of the Earth.
Other than their mass, it is unknown whether these planets will have any other parallels to Earth. Once scientists comprehend these rogue planets, they will be able to provide more light on the evolution, formation, and disruption of planetary systems. The telescope’s name has been preserved as a tribute to Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief of astronomy and “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.”
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland Senior Research scientist and co-author of two papers David Bennett said, “We estimate that our galaxy is home to 20 times more rogue planets than stars – trillions of worlds wandering alone.” “This is the first measurement of the number of rogue planets in the galaxy that is sensitive to planets less massive than Earth,” he added.
The team’s results are the result of a nine-year investigation dubbed MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) at Mount John University Observatory in New Zealand. “Microlensing is the only way we can find objects like low-mass free-floating planets and even primordial black holes,” stated Takahiro Sumi, Osaka University’s professor, and lead author of the paper. “It’s very exciting to use gravity to discover objects we could never hope to see directly,” he added.
“We found that Earth-size rogues are more common than more massive ones”
NASA has found the worlds in our solar system as well as the 5,300 planets outside our solar system in just a few decades. The vast majority of these newly discovered worlds are either incredibly close to their host star or enormous in size, or both. Meanwhile, the team’s findings revealed that rogue planets are often on the small side. “We found that Earth-size rogues are more common than more massive ones,” said Sumi said. “The difference in star-bound and free-floating planets’ average masses holds a key to understanding planetary formation mechanisms,” he added.
The Roman telescope will reveal solitary planets by microlensing
Once launched in May 2027, the Roman telescope will reveal solitary planets by microlensing, which is extremely rare. “Roman will be sensitive to even lower-mass rogue planets since it will observe from space,” stated Naoki Koshimoto, who led the paper. “The combination of Roman’s wide view and sharp vision will allow us to study the objects it finds in more detail than we can do using only ground-based telescopes, which is a thrilling prospect,” he added.