The mission, named in honor of astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, aims to map billions of galaxies and tens of billions of stars over a five-year span to probe dark energy, dark matter, and the large-scale structure of the universe.

Roman will operate from the Earth–Sun L2 point, about 1 million miles away, a stable, dark-sky environment similar to JWST’s operating location.

The mission honors Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief of astronomy, and seeks to provide expansive views of the universe and new insights into fundamental cosmic components.

Over five years, Roman will map billions of galaxies and tens of billions of stars, building catalogs of tens of thousands of exoplanets and advancing our understanding of dark energy, dark matter, and cosmic structure.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is in final launch preparations at Kennedy Space Center, with liftoff targeted for late August after the telescope has been raised from its horizontal position.

The rocket for launch is SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, a trio of Falcon 9 cores delivering about 5.1 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, with Starship expected to surpass it in power in the future.

The $4.3 billion telescope will launch atop SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy from Launch Pad 39-A at KSC, marking a high-profile deployment of the rocket at the center.

Roman recently relocated from Goddard Space Flight Center to KSC, where teams are assembling and testing the telescope in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility with a crane-assisted setup.

Roman will survey a vastly larger field of view than Hubble, study dark matter and dark energy, and directly image exoplanets using the Roman Coronagraph Instrument.

The scientific community eagerly anticipates Roman’s capabilities to extend our cosmic understanding beyond what the Hubble Space Telescope has achieved.

The telescope arrived in Florida in June boxed on its side and has since been moved to upright position in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility for flight prep.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson highlighted Roman’s speed and reach, noting it can survey the sky over 1,000 times faster than Hubble and cover about 200 times more sky per image, enabling a vast new cosmic atlas.