Overview
- NASA completed the final inspection of Roman’s 2.4‑meter primary mirror on June 2, 2026, clearing the telescope to be packed and readied for transport to Kennedy Space Center.
- The spacecraft will travel to Florida on NASA’s Pegasus barge and enter final integration and launch processing before a planned launch from LC‑39A on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy as early as September 2026.
- Roman combines Hubble‑sized optics with a field of view roughly 100 times larger and a 400‑nanometer silver coating on its mirror to deliver wide‑field near‑infrared surveys and high‑contrast imaging.
- The observatory carries a wide‑field infrared camera and a Coronagraph Instrument and will search for exoplanets by transits, microlensing and direct imaging, with mission estimates of about 100,000 transit detections and more than 1,000 microlensing discoveries.
- Beyond planets, Roman will map dark matter, probe dark energy and chart galaxy formation from L2, and it is designed to produce large survey datasets that will complement targeted follow‑up by JWST and astrometric catalogs like Gaia.