NASA Roman Telescope aims to discover up to 100,000 new exoplanets

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled for launch before September 2026, will conduct the most extensive search for planets beyond the Solar System. By monitoring millions of stars across the Milky Way’s central bulge and outer regions, the observatory is expected to add roughly 100,000 exoplanets to the current catalog of about 6,300, using transit dips and gravitational microlensing to detect worlds of all sizes.

The 2.4‑metre telescope will operate with international partners including ESA, JAXA, CNES and Germany’s Max Planck Institute. Its surveys will also probe dark‑energy signatures and other stellar phenomena, while expanding knowledge of how planetary formation varies in different galactic environments.