NASA loads over a million names onto Roman Telescope for deep-space journey
Technicians at Kennedy Space Center placed a memory card holding 1,350,144 public submissions onto the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will travel to the Sun-Earth L2 point.
At Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA technicians fitted a memory card with 1,350,144 names onto the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on July 27. The list, gathered from contributors around the globe and featuring astronauts slated for Artemis II and Artemis III, will accompany the observatory to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, a stable orbit roughly one million miles from Earth where solar and terrestrial gravity balance.
The telescope bears the name of Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s inaugural chief astronomer who advocated for space-based observatories. NASA and SpaceX plan to launch the spacecraft no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT on August 30 using a Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A. The mission aims to expand humanity’s view of the cosmos while preserving a record of public involvement.
Why it matters
The plaque turns the Roman Telescope into a symbolic time-capsule, linking public engagement with a major deep-space observatory.
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