“I wondered had I really oversold the Hubble. I have to admit that, since, I have been convinced that I didn’t,” said Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first Chief Astronomer. Today, NASA announced that it is naming its next-generation ‘dark-energy’ space telescope, Hubble’s successor, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), in her honor.
There is an as-yet-unseen population of Jupiter-like planets orbiting nearby Sun-like stars, awaiting discovery by future missions like NASA’s WFIRST space telescope, according to new models of gas giant planet formation by observational astronomer Alan Boss, supported by a new Science paper on the surprising discovery of a gas giant planet orbiting a low-mass star. Boss’s work focuses on the Astrometric Planet Search project, which has been underway for the last decade at Carnegie Institute’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile..
“Although it’s a small fraction of the sky, it’s huge compared to what other space telescopes can do,” said astronomer Matthew Penny, at The Ohio State University. “It’s WFIRST’s unique combination—both a wide field of view and a high resolution—that make it so powerful for microlensing planet searches. Previous space telescopes, including Hubble and James Webb, have had to choose one or the other.”
The Galaxy Report newsletter brings you daily news of space and science that has the capacity to provide clues to the mystery of our existence and add a much needed cosmic perspective in our current Anthropocene Epoch.
Rarest Thing Ever Detected –“One Trillion Times Age of the Universe” 
The Most Terrifying Science-Fiction Series to Misinterpreting JWST Alien Planet Signals (The Galaxy Report)
Pale Yellow Dots to Exoplanet Discovery Shows What Earth Will Be Like in Five Billion Years (Planet Earth Report)
The Missing Galaxy: “Milky Way’s Long-Lost Companion We Didn’t Know Existed”
Super-Earths More Common and Habitable Than Earth Itself (The Galaxy Report)
Our ‘Glowing’ Universe: “An Eye-Opening Surprise” (Weekend Feature)
Chinese Fossil Discovery Rewrites History of Life to World’s Largest Organism Has Stopped Growing (Planet Earth Report Weekend)
Milky Way’s Graveyard of Dead Stars to Math Proof Alien Life Exists? (The Galaxy Report)
Mystery of Jupiter’s Metallic Oceans and Enormous Magnetic FieldEarth is ‘Well-Hidden’ from Extraterrestrial Civilizations Hunting for Habitable Planets (The Galaxy Report)
