Kenneth’s Official NASA Website
Kenneth G Carpenter
Dr. Kenneth Carpenter is the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Operations Project Scientist and the Ground Systems Scientist for the Roman Space Telescope (RST). He is also part of the Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.
In addition to his scientific work, Carpenter enjoys photography and has a passion for space exploration, the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and all things related to *Star Trek* and Disney. He credits both *Star Trek* and his visit to the 1964–’65 New York World’s Fair as key inspirations for his career at NASA. Carpenter has also been a speaker at various *Star Trek* and media conventions, including DragonCon in Atlanta, StarFest in Denver, and Shore Leave.
Presentations at Shore Leave 46 (2026):
News from the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes
NASA’s currently operating large, Strategic Observatories, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continue their astounding scientific missions, studying everything from our nearest celestial neighbors within our own solar system to the very edges of our observable Universe, back to when the Universe was very young. Dr. Carpenter will update us on the status of the Observatories and show some of their latest observations, including some that show the power of joint observations.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
“There is another” – as a famous character once said. In this case, another large, Strategic Observatory will join the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) this fall, with a planned launch date of August 30, 2026. This new telescope, named after NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy Nancy Grace Roman who is also generally referred to as the “Mother of Hubble”, is designed to perform large-area infrared surveys of the sky. It will have a field of view 100x the typical Hubble or Webb observation and is designed to study “Dark Energy” and seek to understand the accelerating expansion of our Universe, search for exoplanets using gravitational microlensing, and demonstrate a new-technology coronagraph to obtain the first direct images and spectra of planets around the nearest stars.