The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled for launch as early as September 2026, and no later than May 2027. Roman's Wide Field Instrument (WFI) will provide Hubble-like sensitivity and resolution over a field 200 times larger than Hubble's cameras, enabling highly efficient survey operations. Roman is also equipped with a novel coronagraph instrument, as a technology demonstrator of high-contrast imaging of nearby exoplanets. ESA is contributing to the NASA-led mission as a Mission of Opportunity.

Given the approaching launch, this Special Session will provide a timely forum to inform the community on the status of the mission, engage European users in the Roman community, and describe the exciting scientific opportunities ahead.

This Special Session will explore the four community defined surveys, including the Galactic Bulge Time Domain, Galactic Plane, High Latitude Wide Area, and High Latitude Time Domain Surveys. Roman data are publicly available and have no proprietary period; the session will introduce the planned data products, data releases, data access methods via the Roman Research Nexus science platform, and key tools that will enable scientific exploration and discoveries from the vast survey data.

The session will also include contributed talks and e-Posters to showcase future Roman science to a wider audience and to help stimulate the community about the research possibilities that Roman will open-up and its synergies other facilities, in particular the strong complementarity with ESA's Euclid mission.

Programme

Invited speakers

• Ell Bogat (U. Maryland)
• Rebekah Hounsell(University of Maryland)
• Eamonn Kerins (Manchester)
• Hans-Walter Rix (MPIA, Heidelberg)
• Yun Wang (IPAC, Caltech)

Scientific organisers

Bethan James (ESA), Chris Evans (ESA), Kristen McQuinn (STScI), Beth Biller (Edinburgh), Gael Chavin (MPIA), Eamonn Kerins (Manchester), Eduardo Martin (IAC), Ivelina Momcheva (MPIA), Ismael Tereno (Lisbon).

Contact

Bethan.James @ esa.int