Muscat: NASA has unveiled its new space telescope, Roman, designed to scan vast expanses of the universe for exoplanets and to seek answers to the greatest mysteries in physics: dark matter and dark energy. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said from the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland that the next-generation telescope "will provide planet Earth with a new atlas of the universe."

According to Oman News Agency, the telescope, more than 12 meters long and equipped with large solar panels, will be transported to Florida for launch as early as September aboard a SpaceX rocket. Named after Nancy Grace Roman, a pioneering American astronomer known as the "Mother of Hubble" in reference to NASA's famous Hubble Space Telescope, the observatory cost more than four billion dollars.

From an observation point 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, Roman will survey vast areas of the sky with a field of view more than a hundred times greater than Hubble's. Nicola Fox, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said Roman's wide-angle lens would enable "the discovery of tens of thousands of new planets" as well as "thousands of supernovae" - massive stars nearing the end of their lives.

Roman also aims to study the invisible: dark matter and dark energy, which are thought to make up 95 percent of the universe. Using infrared technology, it will detect light emitted by celestial bodies billions of years ago, effectively traveling back in time to better understand these two mysterious phenomena.