I’m an exoplanet scientist. Here’s what we lose if we don’t launch Roman.

The president’s proposed budget includes major cuts to NASA — among them, the elimination of funding for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Set to launch in just two years, Roman is poised to transform our understanding of exoplanets and the structure of the universe. Like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), it can detect both visible and infrared light — wavelengths longer than what our eyes can see. But Roman is fundamentally different in one key way: its much larger field of view. It can observe enormous swaths of the sky at once using its wide field instrument. That makes it capable of science that no other existing observatory can do, including JWST. And if it is killed, we will miss out on a generation of new scientific discoveries.