NASA Completes Preparations to Launch Next-Generation Space Telescope

NASA is preparing to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a next-generation observatory designed to study hundreds of millions of stars and billions of galaxies. The mission could also help scientists better understand dark energy, dark matter and some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch Sunday at 7:26 a.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The observatory will travel into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

NASA will provide live coverage of the launch on its website and other platforms. Coverage begins at 6:20 a.m. ET.

Often compared with the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, the Roman observatory is expected to transform scientists’ understanding of the universe and humanity’s place within it.

The Roman Space Telescope is designed to survey more of the sky than any previous space telescope. During its five-year mission, it will capture wide-field views of the universe, investigate previously unexplored regions of the Milky Way and potentially discover more than 100,000 planets orbiting other stars. Its observations of dark matter and dark energy could provide new insights into two of astronomy’s most challenging questions.

“Some of the most long-standing mysteries in modern astrophysics are: What is the nature of dark matter and what is the nature of dark energy?” said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Rose Earth and Space Center at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. “We have an idea, but we don’t know what it is. This telescope will try to provide the best data available to address those questions.”

The $4.3 billion NASA mission has been in development for nearly two decades and is expected to launch nine months earlier than planned.

That achievement would be significant for any NASA flagship mission, particularly after the team navigated the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and government shutdowns, including two of the longest shutdowns in U.S. history.

After launch, the Roman Space Telescope will travel for more than three months to its destination approximately 1 million miles from Earth. The observatory will operate near L2, or the second Lagrange point, where the gravitational forces of the Sun and Earth allow it to maintain a stable orbit. At L2, Roman will join NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

Although Roman is frequently compared with the Hubble Space Telescope, its survey capabilities are significantly greater. Roman will be able to scan the sky up to 1,000 times faster than Hubble, while each image will cover an area at least 100 times larger than a Hubble image.

NASA has planned three major surveys for the Roman Space Telescope’s mission. The largest, lasting more than a year, will examine the Milky Way’s dense, star-filled center, known as the Galactic Bulge, and create an extensive catalog of the objects it detects.

The other two surveys will focus on dark matter and dark energy. Dark matter is believed to be an invisible form of matter that accounts for most of the matter in galaxies. Because it cannot be seen directly, scientists study it through the gravitational effects it produces. Dark energy is the mysterious force thought to be accelerating the expansion of the universe.

The Roman Space Telescope is named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer and a pioneer of modern space astronomy. Space-based telescopes can observe the universe more clearly and in greater detail than many ground-based observatories because Earth’s atmosphere absorbs and distorts some wavelengths of light.

Born in 1925, Nancy Grace Roman died in 2018. She played a key role in securing congressional support for the Hubble Space Telescope and became known as the “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.” NASA named its newest space observatory in her honor in 2020.