Overview
- The Roman telescope, which completed its final primary‑mirror inspection on Tuesday, is being prepared for shipment by Pegasus barge from NASA Goddard to Kennedy Space Center for final integration and launch processing.
- NASA plans to process the observatory at Launch Complex 39A and expects liftoff on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy as early as September 2026 pending final prelaunch integration and agency reviews.
- Roman combines a Hubble‑size 2.4‑meter mirror with a field of view about 100 times larger to carry out wide‑field near‑infrared surveys that will map dark matter, probe dark energy, and chart galaxy and stellar populations.
- The mission will use transit monitoring, gravitational microlensing, and a Coronagraph Instrument to search for planets, with scientists estimating roughly 100,000 transit detections plus more than 1,000 microlensing discoveries and targeted atmospheric studies of selected exoplanets.
- Once deployed to the Sun–Earth L2 point Roman will operate in a thermally stable orbit to produce panoramic datasets that complement JWST and Gaia, and its survey catalogs are expected to reshape exoplanet demographics and guide follow‑up observations; next steps include transport, final integration, and formal launch reviews.