NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has passed its Flight Readiness Review and is targeted to lift off no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT on August 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39A. The launch puts the roughly $4 billion flagship mission nine months ahead of its original schedule, a rare feat for a NASA observatory of this scale.
Roman's Wide Field Instrument will capture images at Hubble's resolution but across a field of view about 100 times larger, letting it survey huge swaths of sky in a single pointing. Scientists will use it to map how the universe has expanded over billions of years, hunt for signs of dark energy, and detect thousands of exoplanets through gravitational microlensing.
Built in part around optics originally acquired from a repurposed spy-satellite mirror donated to NASA, Roman is named after the agency's first chief astronomer, who championed the Hubble program. A backup launch opportunity is available August 31 if needed.