NASA and SpaceX Prepare for Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Launch

NASA has teamed with SpaceX to send the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into space atop a Falcon Heavy rocket from Florida on Sunday.

The launch is scheduled for Sunday morning from Kennedy Space Center. Liftoff from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, is targeted for 7:26 AM EDT (11:26 UTC). After separating from the rocket, the observatory will require approximately three months (~100 days) to reach the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2.

During that transit, engineers will commission the telescope and ready its systems for science operations. Falcon Heavy’s two side boosters are slated to return for landings at separate zones on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, while the center core will be expended to provide the extra performance required for the heavy payload.

Roman carries two instruments for its science mission at L2. Once at its destination in a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, the observatory will rely on the Wide Field Instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument to hunt for exoplanets, probe dark energy, and investigate other astrophysical phenomena.

The mission traces its origins to a 2010 decadal survey recommendation. That year the U.S. National Research Council Decadal Survey placed the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, known as WFIRST, at the top of NASA’s astronomy priorities for the coming decade. Early concepts resembled elements of the earlier proposed Joint Dark Energy Mission and called for a 1.3 m three-mirror anastigmat design paired with a single-prism spectrometer.

In 2012 the National Reconnaissance Office supplied NASA with two surplus Harris Corporation telescopes. One of those instruments, possessing a mirror equal in diameter to Hubble’s yet offering a wider field of view because of its shorter focal length, was ultimately chosen. Although building a telescope from scratch would probably have cost less, adopting the NRO hardware lent the project added political weight.

Development milestones stretched from 2015 through 2021. Mission planners spent 2015 evaluating a geosynchronous orbit versus placement at L2, weighing observing constraints, thermal stability, and future servicing possibilities before settling on a halo orbit at L2 in February 2016. NASA assigned construction and operations to its Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in November 2018. A white paper detailing the mission’s capabilities appeared in February 2019, followed by formal approval for implementation and construction the following March. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine revealed the new name—the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope—in May 2020 to honor the agency’s first female executive and Chief of Astronomy. The project cleared its critical design review the next year.