NASA launches Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to map the universe

NASA has launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into orbit via a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The $4 billion infrared observatory is traveling to the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, located approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

Designed to complement the James Webb and Hubble telescopes, the Roman telescope features a field of view 100 times larger than Hubble’s. It aims to create a massive new atlas of the universe by investigating dark matter, dark energy, and the accelerating expansion of space. The mission will also utilize a specialized coronagraph to detect thousands of exoplanets by blocking starlight to image distant orbiting bodies.

The telescope is expected to generate 1.3 terabytes of data daily, which will be made available to the scientific community and the public. While the primary mission is planned for five years, NASA estimates the observatory could operate for up to a decade. Scientists anticipate the first scientific images will arrive in early 2027 following a calibration phase.