NASA is ready to send its Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope skyward from Kennedy Space Center, with liftoff targeted for no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 30. The telescope will ride a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A, with live coverage beginning at 6:20 a.m. and streaming at nasa.gov/live.
Roman is NASA's most ambitious wide-field infrared observatory to date. Named for the agency's first chief astronomer, it boasts a field of view at least 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope while delivering equally sharp imagery — a combination that should allow sweeping surveys no previous telescope could manage.
Scientists plan to use Roman to investigate dark energy and dark matter, discover and characterize exoplanets, map billions of galaxies, study black holes, and probe objects ranging from our own solar system out to the very edge of the observable universe.
After separating from the Falcon Heavy, the observatory will travel to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point — L2 — roughly one million miles from Earth. Roman carries a primary mission lifetime of five years, with an operational goal of a full decade.
Full launch coverage details were provided by NASA.
