NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Telescope Is About to Start Its Cosmic Survey

After nearly a decade in development, NASA’s next big telescope is almost ready to travel into space. The agency has set Sunday as the launch date for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This places the project approximately eight months ahead of its original schedule and, according to NASA leadership, significantly under budget.

NASA is getting some assistance from SpaceX for this launch. The telescope is being taken into space by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, where it’ll separate and head to its final location while the SpaceX rocket returns to Earth.

With the launch just a few days away, the telescope should be pretty close to ready to go. That includes detailed inspections to verify it sustained no damage during transit. Engineers also loaded 290 gallons of hydrazine to fuel the telescope and conducted several dress rehearsals in preparation for the launch.

The destination for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, located about 1 million miles from Earth on the far side of the sun. The region is a gravitational sweet spot that allows spacecraft to maintain a relatively stable position while orbiting the sun alongside Earth.

How to watch the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope launch

The launch is set to take off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday at 7:26 a.m. ET/4:26 a.m. PT. NASA is livestreaming the event, with coverage beginning at 6:20 a.m. ET, and it’ll include a post-launch news conference starting at 9:30 a.m. ET with a media Q&A session.

NASA is streaming it across all its social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and X. The agency says the launch is also watchable on NASA Plus, Amazon Prime and Discovery Plus. Netflix isn’t mentioned on NASA’s list, but it won’t hurt to check the day of the launch to see if it’s streaming there as well. 

It’s quite an early launch for a Sunday, so if you’re a late sleeper or a churchgoer, you may have to wait until later to watch it back.

What is the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope looking for?

The telescope is named after astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first female executive and an instrumental voice in the planning and construction of the Hubble Space Telescope. 

The two telescopes share more than just a connection to Roman. Both use 2.4-meter mirrors and can produce images with similar sharpness. But Roman is designed to see much more of the sky at once, capturing images at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s. The observatories also specialize in different wavelengths of light: Hubble observes ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared light, while Roman focuses on visible and infrared wavelengths.

NASA envisions Roman and Hubble working hand in hand. Roman will scan enormous swaths of the sky, uncovering objects and phenomena that can later be examined in greater detail by Hubble. By combining Roman’s panoramic surveys with Hubble’s more focused observations, astronomers hope to build a richer picture of the cosmos. 

During its mission, Roman is expected to observe more than 100 billion stars and billions of galaxies, detect tens of thousands of supernovae and transmit nearly 1.4 terabytes of scientific data to Earth every day.

Joe is a freelance journalist. It all started with a long-running affection for building his own PCs, which he did for the first time as a teenager. It evolved into a lifelong enjoyment of putting words on the internet about the subject. He’s written for CNET, PCMag, Mashable and SlashGear as a freelance writer, and worked as a Senior Editor at Android Authority for 10 years. When he’s not writing about tech and science, he’s learning the ins and outs of DIY home repair, gaming, playing his bass guitars and posting help on PC building and gaming subreddits. He is a staunch believer that orange juice should have pulp.

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