Overview
- The observatory completed ocean transport and arrived at Kennedy Space Center on June 21, then was moved into the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility to begin final processing.
- Engineers will run a roughly 70-day campaign of decontamination, system checkouts, final tests, fueling with about 290 gallons of hydrazine, and encapsulation inside a Falcon Heavy payload fairing.
- NASA has accelerated the launch target to August 30, 2026, for a SpaceX Falcon Heavy liftoff from LC‑39A that will send Roman toward the Sun–Earth L2 parking point.
- Teams addressed a transport cooling problem that required emergency rental chillers to keep the telescope below its 74°F limit during the barge voyage, and technicians report the temperature issue has been resolved.
- Roman pairs a 2.4-meter mirror with a 300-megapixel Wide Field Instrument built from 18 Teledyne H4RG-10 detectors plus a coronagraph demonstrator to survey billions of galaxies and seek hundreds of thousands of exoplanets during a five-year mission that could extend to about 10 years based on fuel and health.