NASA launches $4.3B Roman Space Telescope to map the hidden universe

NASA's newest flagship observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, lifted off Sunday morning from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, beginning a quest to map the hidden universe on a scale never before attempted from space.

The $4.3 billion telescope launched at 7:26 a.m. EDT aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A, the same historic pad that once hosted Apollo and Space Shuttle missions. The bus-sized observatory successfully separated from the rocket roughly 31 minutes after liftoff and began its journey toward the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, about 1 million miles from Earth, where it will join the James Webb Space Telescope.audacy+3

A Wide Eye on the Cosmos

Roman carries the widest infrared field of view ever sent to space — more than 100 times broader than the Hubble Space Telescope's — paired with a 300-megapixel camera that matches Hubble's sensitivity but works 1,000 times faster. A month of Milky Way observations by Roman would take Hubble a century to complete, according to senior project scientist Julie McEnery.spacenews+1

"It's going to find thousands of supernovae, tens of thousands of planets, billions of galaxies and tens of billions of stars," NASA science mission director Nicky Fox said.audacy

The telescope also carries an experimental coronagraph instrument designed to block out starlight and directly image faint planets orbiting nearby stars. Together with Webb, the European Space Agency's Euclid spacecraft, and the ground-based Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, Roman will form part of a coordinated effort to probe dark energy and dark matter — the unseen forces that comprise roughly 95 percent of the universe.spacenews+1

Ahead of Schedule and Under Budget

The launch came nearly nine months ahead of the telescope's formal readiness date of May 2027, a rarity for a NASA flagship mission. Construction was completed in November 2025, and NASA and SpaceX cleared their final Launch Readiness Review on Friday.science.nasa+2

Roman's primary mirror — nearly 8 feet in diameter — is repurposed spy satellite hardware, one of two surplus mirrors donated to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office more than a decade ago. The telescope is designed to be refueled by a future robotic tanker, potentially extending its planned five-year mission.spacenews+1

A Namesake Long Overdue

The observatory is NASA's first space telescope named after a woman. Nancy Grace Roman, who joined the agency in 1959 and became its first chief astronomer, championed the idea that observatories above Earth's atmosphere could see farther and clearer. She died in 2018 at age 93.audacy

"This is very, very fitting. I think Nancy would be very proud," said retired NASA scientist Ed Weiler, who coined the phrase "Mother of Hubble" for Roman. The telescope will take more than three months to reach its observation post before beginning its survey of the cosmos.audacy