Lucas Paganini, the Argentine Behind NASA's New Telescope

The program executive of the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, from Maipú, Mendoza, spoke about the questions this observatory seeks to answer. The telescope, the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, will explore deep space and was launched by NASA on Sunday, August 30 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Why is the universe expanding? What is dark matter? Do planets similar to Earth exist elsewhere in the universe? These are some of the questions the Nancy Grace Roman telescope from NASA seeks to answer. Since the beginning of time, we have looked at the sky trying to discover its secrets and, despite its immensity, each year different space agencies around the world contribute their grain of sand to understanding the cosmos. And an Argentine is part of that effort.

It is Lucas Paganini, program executive of the Roman telescope, who spoke from Kennedy Space Center, steps away from the launch platform: "I joined the project four years into the ten years it has taken since its inception. Without a doubt it is very exciting, the entire team is very, very happy."

Technicians from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center installed the sunshield of the solar panel array for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Roman, which will work together with its companions Hubble and Webb, was launched by a Falcon Heavy rocket from SpaceX, one of the largest in the world with 27 Merlin 1D engines that provide enormous power during launch and whose side boosters return to Earth.

"It is one of the most powerful tools we have created to study the universe and it is very simple, what we are trying to understand is how we came to be what we are today and try to understand how the universe works," said Paganini.

What Roman will allow is to map the sky with a vision capability 100 times greater than telescopes like Hubble, but with the same image quality, the expert clarified. This means that what Hubble would take 1,000 years to do, with the new telescope can be done in one. "And that will allow us to map trillions of galaxies and stars to truly understand what the universe is made of, which is something we really don't know today," he added.

Nancy Grace Roman: how it will create the first "census" of planets

The Roman Space Telescope will study large-scale characteristics of the universe to learn more about dark energy and dark matter, and will also generate advances in understanding exoplanets, their formation, evolution, and the properties of planetary systems. Is there one similar to ours?

"We won't detect life, but we will detect places or planets where habitability could exist," said Paganini. This is a first step for future NASA projects such as the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a space telescope with large aperture and advanced technology.

Since 1995, the year the first exoplanet was detected, humanity has catalogued approximately more than 6,000. Paganini stated that today we know each star has at least one planet orbiting it. And we also know there are billions of stars.

"This means there are billions of planets we still haven't discovered, so we are in the infancy of exoplanet science and Roman will advance it greatly," he concluded. To do this, it will use the coronagraph, a tool to block starlight and thus be able to directly see exoplanets and planetary formation disks.

What lies beyond our Solar System?

We know only 5% of what the universe is, counting planets, moons, comets, stars, galaxies, and black holes. "That means there is 95% of what we call dark energy and dark matter, which we don't really know what is. We know there are effects occurring in the expansion of the universe, but we don't know what generates them, and Roman aims to make some progress in that field," he admitted.

Planet Earth in the midst of the immensity of the cosmos is very small, compared to the ongoing expansion of the universe. "Without a doubt it is not just a study of the vastness of the universe, it is also a study of ourselves and where we stand," reflected the engineer.

What happens after launch?

Once launched, another phase begins: exploration. "Once we launch it, you will see a three-month period of something called commissioning, where we check that all systems are ready for science," Paganini assured.

Roman will travel approximately 1.5 million kilometers away—four times the distance between Earth and the Moon—to position itself in the Lagrange orbit (L2), a stable orbit around the Sun, unlike Hubble, which orbits about 500 km from Earth.

Why did they choose that location? "It is a very cold zone, special for infrared observations of stars and galaxies. We will be operating for a minimum of 5 years, but it is expected to last up to 10 years. The only thing that limits this operation is the fuel we carry, approximately 1,000 kilograms," Paganini detailed.

After launch, a series of protocols are tested: "We simulate as if that day and a half were happening. They throw problem scenarios at you, timing issues or some failure, and the team prepares to react in time. In those tests the team doesn't know what might happen," he explained.

All of this aims to reduce any type of risk to the minimum. The telescope is 13 meters long—similar to a Tyrannosaurus Rex or a school bus—and weighs approximately 10,000 kilos. Once in orbit, approximately 1.5 TB of data will be downloaded daily from Earth.

"That is a lot, it's what hard drives in our computers generally have, to give you an idea. And what's interesting is that much of the data and analysis will be done in the cloud because of how large it is; operating that way is something new in astrophysics," commented the engineer.

A novelty of this mission is that the data will be freely accessible: as soon as they are ready they can be analyzed, so there is no need to be physically at NASA to do analysis or view the data. "You can be in a school in Argentina, Mexico or the United States, discovery and science have no borders and NASA has always sought that," he added.

The telescope is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman (1925–2018), NASA's first chief astronomer, and the agency plans to share the first images it captures from December this year.

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Who is Lucas Paganini?

• He is 46 years old, born and raised in a neighborhood in Maipú, Mendoza, where his father worked as an engineer at a nearby wine estate.

• As a child he dreamed of being a spacewalker or aviation pilot, inspired by NASA's Space Shuttle program, although in his province there was no possibility of studying a space career.

• He attended elementary school at a public school and secondary school at San Luis Gonzaga College, with a business focus.

• He studied Electronic Engineering and Telecommunications at the University of Mendoza.

• He earned a Ph.D. in Natural Sciences (Planetary Sciences) from the University of Freiburg, Germany.

• He joined NASA in 2010 and has spent more than 15 years at the agency, working in both planetary science and astronomy.

• Before Roman, he led the international team that, through the Juno mission (2021-2022), studied Jupiter and its moons Ganymede, Europa, and Io, discovering water vapor on Europa.

• He is the author of more than 30 scientific publications.

• An asteroid was named in his honor: 33323 Lucaspaganini, which orbits between Mars and Jupiter and measures approximately 16 km in diameter.

• Today he is the principal program executive of the Nancy Grace Roman telescope in NASA's Astrophysics Division: he acts as a liaison between the teams that developed the observatory and the agency's leadership, coordinating advances, challenges, and strategic decisions.