- NASA’s Roman Space Telescope launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Sunday
- Roman is traveling toward the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point
- Ground controllers received Roman’s first telemetry seven minutes after liftoff
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Sunday and began a three-month commissioning journey to its final orbit, roughly one million miles from Earth.
How Is Roman Making Its Way to Deep Space?
The agency said telemetry from Roman reached NASA’s ground controllers at Goddard Space Flight Center seven minutes after liftoff. Falcon Heavy separated from the observatory at the 31-minute mark.
Roman is now headed toward the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, relying on the Deep Space Network’s Canberra complex in Australia before handing off to stations in Madrid and California. NASA confirmed that the observatory’s solar panels and lower instrument sunshade deployed successfully, roughly 83 minutes after launch.
What Is NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Designed to Study?
Once operational, Roman is expected to survey the sky roughly 1,000 times faster than the Hubble Space Telescope using its Wide Field Instrument, or WFI. BAE Systems developed the WFI’s Opto-Mechanical Assembly, which provides the instrument’s optical bench, thermal control system, precision mechanisms, optics and electronics. The 300-megapixel infrared camera is set to activate several weeks into the mission.
L3Harris Technologies provided Roman’s 2.4-meter Optical Telescope Assembly, which serves as the observatory’s primary optical system. The observatory is designed to help scientists investigate dark matter, dark energy and exoplanets, with its data expected to support research beyond those core objectives.
NASA expects to release Roman’s first images by early 2027, following a three-month commissioning period.
NASA Administrator and 2026 Wash100 Award winner Jared Isaacman credited the mission’s more-than-decade-long development for coming in ahead of schedule and under budget.
“Now, Roman will give us a new atlas of the universe, push the boundaries of discovery, and demonstrate what is possible when America’s space program pairs bold ambition with disciplined execution,” said Isaacman.
