NASA's giant new space telescope just passed every big test — and it can see things 100 million times fainter than our eyes

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is nearly ready to start work in earnest. The observatory, launched in late August, has now moved into its final round of checks — called science commissioning — after passing its big operational tests: it can lock onto a target and hold steady, take pictures, and send its data home. One worry melted away in testing: in crowded star fields and dusty clouds, where a telescope's guidance can get confused, Roman held its aim beautifully in every case. Some of its systems are even performing better than required. The team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is now fine-tuning image quality, so tiny flaws don't hide the faint signals Roman was built to catch — in a typical snapshot it will pick up objects 100 million times fainter than the human eye can see. Then come the vast sky surveys, hunting distant galaxies, clues about dark energy, and planets around other stars.