NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Construction Complete, Potential for Early Launch
GREENBELT, MD – May 9, 2024 – NASA’s Nancy Grace roman Space Telescope is fully assembled and has successfully completed rigorous testing to ensure its survival during launch and operational functionality in space, the agency announced today. The telescope, designed to unravel the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter, is currently slated to launch by May 2027, but officials indicate a potential launch readiness as early as fall 2026.
The completed telescope will be transported to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida this summer for final preparations and integration with its launch vehicle, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. Once in orbit – a gravitationally stable location nearly a million miles from earth – Roman will embark on a five-year primary mission to observe billions of galaxies and hundreds of millions of stars.
Scientists anticipate the telescope will provide crucial data regarding the accelerating expansion of the universe and detect over 100,000 exoplanets through gravitational lensing, a technique that magnifies the light of distant objects.
“With Roman’s construction complete, we are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific revelation,” said Julie McEnery, Roman’s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. “We stand to learn a tremendous amount of new details about the universe very rapidly after Roman launches.”
