NASA's Roman Space Telescope lifts off on Falcon Heavy, begins journey to L2

At 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope rode a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center, commencing a three-month, roughly million-mile cruise to the Sun-Earth L2 halo. Ground stations began receiving data within minutes, and the rocket’s core and boosters performed as planned, with boosters returning for refurbishment. The spacecraft has already unfolded its solar arrays and sunshade, and will soon deploy its high-gain antenna, visor cover and activate the Coronagraph Instrument, which will image Jupiter-like planets as a technology test for future missions.

Its primary Wide Field Instrument, a 300-megapixel infrared camera, will survey the sky a thousand times faster than Hubble, supporting research into dark matter, dark energy and exoplanets. Communications will shift to the Deep Space Network via stations in Australia, Spain and California, ensuring continuous contact. NASA expects the first science images by early 2027, with the telescope sending back 1.4 TB of data daily for analysis by AI and citizen scientists.