“10…9…8…”
Jacqueline McCleary paid no attention to the countdown and trained her eyes on the northern horizon. She wasn’t going to miss a thing.
The Northeastern University observational cosmologist and assistant professor stood on the sandy shoreline of Alan Shepard Park in Cocoa Beach, roughly 17 miles away from where the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket was preparing to send the 18,000-pound, tour bus-sized Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on a million-mile mission to help scientists learn more about exoplanets, dark matter and other mysteries of deep space.
That recent Sunday was the first time she and fellow Northeastern cosmologist and associate professor Jonathan Blazek witnessed a rocket launch in person. The pair were invited to Florida as members of the Roman Science Collaboration, a volunteer group of scientists who came together as a community with varied expertise to plan the research they will conduct using data from the $4.3 billion mission, driven by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA. They will also be conducting their own supernova, galaxy and dark matter research with Roman data.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo Credit (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
