NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has been cleared for launch, putting the agency’s next major space observatory on track to lift off from Florida on Sunday, August 30. The mission is scheduled to launch at 7:26 a.m. EDT aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, with NASA’s live coverage beginning at 6:20 a.m.
The decision to proceed followed a final Launch Readiness Review conducted by NASA and SpaceX. That review examines the rocket, spacecraft, weather and supporting teams before the countdown begins. As of Friday, forecasters from the U.S. Space Force expected a 60% chance of favorable weather for the planned launch time.
Roman is designed to combine detailed infrared observations with an unusually wide view of the sky. Its field of view will be at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s, allowing it to survey large regions without sacrificing the sharp imaging needed for astrophysics research. NASA expects those observations to help scientists study dark energy and dark matter, map billions of galaxies, investigate black holes and find and characterize planets beyond the solar system.
The observatory carries two main instruments. Its Wide Field Instrument will conduct large astronomical surveys, while its Coronagraph Instrument is a technology demonstration designed to suppress the glare from stars so that much fainter nearby planets and planet-forming disks can be observed directly. Roman is also expected to help astronomers build a statistical picture of planetary systems across the Milky Way rather than focusing only on individual worlds.
After separating from the rocket, Roman will travel roughly one million miles from Earth to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, known as L2. From that region of space, it will begin a primary mission planned to last five years, with NASA setting a goal of operating the observatory for as long as 10 years.
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