Overview
- NASA confirmed on June 4, 2026 that the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch on August 30, 2026, about eight months ahead of its previous May 2027 plan.
- Engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center are finishing final processing and packing the observatory for a barge and ground move to Kennedy Space Center later in June.
- The telescope will enter hazardous‑servicing at KSC where teams will load roughly 1,100 liters of hydrazine for spacecraft maneuvers and run powered tests and launch rehearsals.
- Roman will be integrated onto a SpaceX Falcon Heavy at Launch Complex 39A for a transfer to a Sun–Earth L2 orbit roughly 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
- With a 2.4‑meter mirror and a field of view about 100 times Hubble’s, Roman will run multi‑year wide-field infrared surveys to map dark energy and dark matter and to expand exoplanet discovery while guiding follow‑up by JWST and other telescopes.