Overview
- The observatory has been fueled, sealed inside Falcon Heavy fairings and moved to SpaceX’s LC‑39A hangar, and it is scheduled for a Launch Readiness Review on Aug. 28 with liftoff targeted for Aug. 30 at 7:26 a.m. EDT.
- Roman’s Wide Field Instrument uses an 18‑detector, 300+ megapixel mosaic that gives the telescope about 100 times the field of view of Hubble, letting it capture very large swaths of sky in each exposure.
- A technology‑demonstration coronagraph called "Starglasses" will block starlight to try to directly image Jupiter‑size planets and test deformable‑mirror techniques for future flagship missions.
- NASA expects Roman’s surveys to map roughly 20 billion stars, measure light from more than a billion galaxies, and identify very large numbers of exoplanets while probing dark matter and dark energy.
- If launched on schedule the spacecraft will spend about 30 days en route to Sun–Earth L2, then undergo roughly 100 days of checkout before beginning a five‑year science program whose large public data releases will drive follow‑up studies with Hubble, Webb and ground telescopes.