The universe is about to get a lot more violent, and NASA’s next big space telescope will have front row seats. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch in the coming years, will detect hundreds of events each year where a black hole rips a star to pieces. These stellar murders, known as tidal disruption events, or TDEs, have been hard to catch until now.
A star’s final, spectacular death spiral
When a star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole, gravity pulls it apart in a process called spaghettification. The star’s gas heats up as it falls in, creating a bright flare that can outshine an entire galaxy for weeks or months. Astronomers have only seen about 100 of these events since they were first predicted in the 1970s. Roman will change that by finding up to 1,000 TDEs per year, according to NASA scientists.
How Roman will spot the cosmic carnage
The telescope’s wide field of view and infrared sensitivity make it ideal for this job. Roman will scan large areas of the sky repeatedly, looking for sudden brightening that signals a star being shredded. Most TDEs are hidden by dust, but infrared light can cut through that dust. The telescope will also measure how the brightness changes over time, giving scientists clues about the black hole’s mass and spin. The mission is expected to launch no later than May 2027 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Why this matters for understanding black holes
For astronomers in the United States and around the world, TDEs offer a rare window into black holes that are otherwise invisible. When a black hole is not actively feeding, it emits no light. A tidal disruption event acts like a flashbulb, briefly illuminating the black hole’s environment. By studying these flares, researchers can learn about black hole populations in distant galaxies. The Roman telescope will also help answer how black holes grow and how they affect the galaxies around them.
Roman’s observations will give scientists a statistical sample large enough to test theories about black hole behavior. Instead of relying on a handful of rare events, they will have hundreds of examples each year. That data will help refine models of how stars interact with black holes and what happens to the debris after the star is destroyed.
The telescope is named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer, who helped make the Hubble Space Telescope possible. Her namesake mission will continue that legacy of revealing the hidden universe. For the first time, astronomers will be able to watch black holes feed on a regular basis, not just when they get lucky.
