Overview
- Roman launched on Sunday, August 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy and separated from the rocket before establishing stable communications with mission controllers.
- Mission teams carried out a first mid‑course correction on August 31 to refine the telescope’s path toward the Sun‑Earth L2 point about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
- Engineers successfully deployed the high‑gain communications antenna on August 31 and the protective sunshade on September 1 to enable high‑rate telemetry and thermal control.
- NASA powered on the Coronagraph Instrument for months of calibration and testing as a technology demonstration of starlight suppression; the main Wide Field Instrument is scheduled to be powered on in the coming weeks.
- Teams expect a roughly three‑month transit and commissioning period before science operations begin, with first science‑quality images targeted for early 2027 and a five‑year primary survey of billions of galaxies and tens of thousands of exoplanets planned thereafter.