National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Launches Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Key facts

• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on August 30, 2026.
• The telescope was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
• The Roman Space Telescope will travel to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), about one million miles from Earth, over a three-month journey.
• The mission aims to explore dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets.
• The telescope's Wide Field Instrument is a 300-megapixel infrared camera with 18 4K detectors.
• The Roman telescope is designed to survey the universe a thousand times faster than the Hubble Space Telescope.
• The observatory will send back 1.4 terabytes of data per day, the highest data rate of any NASA astrophysics mission so far.
• The Coronagraph Instrument will demonstrate technology for imaging Earth-like planets in the future.