Our space agency's newest mission opens a new era of comic exploration. A powerful space telescope launched Aug. 30 is expected to discover thousands of new planets and shed light on mysterious dark energy, dark matter and black holes. "Seeing the universe in its early stages will help unravel how it has expanded throughout its history, which will hint at how it may continue to evolve," the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) says at its website.

It's the fifth in a series of U.S. observatories sent on distant voyages, starting in 1990 with the Hubble Space Telescope -- still going strong more than 36 years later. This new instrument is named after NASA's first chief of astronomy, Nancy Grace Roman (who died in 2018 at age 93). It promises a view of the universe so wide and so deep it would take over half a million high-definition TVs to display just one image in full. With a gaze up to a thousand times faster and at least a hundred times wider than Hubble's, its crisp infrared vision is designed to capture billions of galaxies and stars, as well as discover an estimated 100,000 new planets in the Milky Way beyond Earth's solar system (known as exoplanets).

That science work starts after the 42-foot-long Roman reaches its looping orbit about 930,000 miles from Earth, a month-long trip. "At this special place in space," NASA posts at its website, "gravitational forces balance to keep objects in steady orbits with very little assistance. . . . The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help us solve some of the most profound mysteries in astrophysics, such as how the universe has evolved, its ultimate fate, and whether we are alone."

NASA posts: "Roman's barrel-like shape will help block out unwanted light from the sun, Earth and moon, and the spacecraft's distant location will help keep the instruments cool."

Space scientist says: "Whatever Roman tells us will probably be different and more interesting than whatever we came up with [in predictions]. We always discover that nature is more imaginative than we are." -- Jessie Christiansen, chief scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute in Pasadena, Calif.

Nancy Grace Roman's legacy: The pioneering astronomer from Nashville, Tenn., was NASA's first chief of astronomy during the 1960s and 1970s. She created and led the program that launched early orbiting observatories, proving the value of putting telescopes above Earth's atmosphere.