NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched on 30 August 2026 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. It combines a 2.4-metre mirror, the same class a…
Hubble launched on 24 April 1990 and transformed space-based astronomy with unprecedented image sharpness, setting the resolution benchmark that Roman's Wide Field Instr…
The Astro2010 decadal survey, the U.S. astronomy community's ranked list of priority missions, named a wide-field infrared survey telescope its top-priority large space…
NASA formally moved the mission -- then called WFIRST, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope -- into its formulation phase, adopting a 2.4-metre mirror donated by the…
On 20 May 2020, NASA renamed WFIRST the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, honoring the agency's first Chief of Astronomy and a driving advocate for space-based telescop…
Webb launched on 25 December 2021, establishing the extremely sensitive deep-infrared complement to Roman's wide-field survey approach. The two missions were designed to…
The fully assembled observatory underwent thermal-vacuum and acoustic/vibration testing to simulate launch stresses and the deep-space environment, before shipping to Fl…
Roman lifted off at 7:26 a.m. EDT on 30 August 2026 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, separated cleanly from the rocket's second stage at 7:57 a.m. EDT, and established comm…
Roman is now travelling toward an orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point, about 1 million miles from Earth. NASA describes the journey, solar array/sun-shield deployment, t…
Once commissioning ends, Roman's five-year primary mission targets more than a billion galaxies in its High Latitude Wide Area Survey, more than 100,000 exoplanets via i…
Read the complete story, FAQs and key facts.