For decades, space agencies have launched ever more powerful telescopes to see farther into the cosmos. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, transformed astronomy by capturing detailed images of distant galaxies and nebulae. Its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, began operations in 2021 and has since peered deeper into the universe's history, revealing ancient galaxies and black holes. These observatories have shown that the universe is far more dynamic and complex than previously imagined, with star formation, galactic collisions, and black hole growth occurring on vast timescales.

The next step in this progression is the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a NASA mission designed to survey enormous swaths of the sky. Unlike Hubble and Webb, which focus on small patches of the cosmos, Roman is built for wide-field surveys, capturing panoramic views that can reveal billions of galaxies and hundreds of millions of stars. This approach is expected to help scientists tackle some of the biggest questions in modern astronomy, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy. The telescope's development has been a long journey, with planning and construction spanning nearly two decades before its completion.