A space telescope named for a woman who was once told that women could not become scientists is scheduled to launch Sunday morning on a mission to study dark energy, find distant planets, and map billions of galaxies.
NASA and SpaceX are targeting no earlier than 7:26 a.m. Eastern on August 30 for the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket. The next-generation observatory will carry forward the work of Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer and the woman credited with helping turn the Hubble Space Telescope from an ambitious proposal into reality.
Sunday Launch Will Begin Before Sunrise
The Falcon Heavy is scheduled to lift off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA will begin live coverage at 6:20 a.m. Eastern, or 5:20 a.m. Central. The targeted launch time is 6:26 a.m. Central.
SpaceX continued listing the mission for Sunday as of Friday. The launch remains subject to weather, technical conditions, and other operational considerations.
After separating from the rocket, Roman will travel toward the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, known as L2, approximately 1 million miles from Earth. The telescope will orbit near the same region used by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
Roman’s primary mission is expected to last five years, with a goal of operating for 10.
Roman Will See More Sky Than Hubble
Roman has a 7.9-foot primary mirror, approximately the same diameter as Hubble’s. Its Wide Field Instrument, however, will capture a field of view at least 100 times larger.
NASA says Roman will survey the sky as much as 1,000 times faster than Hubble while maintaining similar infrared resolution and sensitivity. The combination will allow scientists to study vast sections of the universe without assembling thousands of individual images.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, Roman was designed in part to investigate dark energy, the unexplained phenomenon associated with the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Scientists will use the telescope to map the distribution of galaxies across space and time. Those observations could help researchers determine whether cosmic acceleration is caused by dark energy or indicates that the current understanding of gravity is incomplete.
Telescope Could Reveal 100,000 Distant Worlds
Roman will also search for planets beyond the solar system by observing the way gravity from stars and planets bends and magnifies light traveling from more distant objects.
NASA estimates that Roman could reveal more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies during its first five years.
The telescope’s Coronagraph Instrument will test technology designed to block the glare of stars, making it possible to observe nearby planets and planet-forming disks.
The coronagraph is a technology demonstration rather than one of Roman’s primary mission requirements. Its performance could inform the development of future observatories intended to image Earth-like planets directly.
NASA will make Roman’s processed science data publicly available without a proprietary period. That policy will allow researchers around the world to begin studying the observations without waiting for exclusive-access periods to expire.
Woman Behind the Mission Broke Barriers
Nancy Grace Roman was born in 1925 and developed an interest in astronomy as a child. At age 11, she organized an astronomy club with classmates to study constellations.
“I was told from the beginning that women could not be scientists,” Roman recalled, according to her NASA biography.
She earned a doctorate in astronomy from the University of Chicago and joined NASA in 1959, one year after the agency was established. She became NASA’s first chief of astronomy in 1960 and the first woman to hold an executive position at the agency.
Roman spent years developing support for a large telescope that could operate above Earth’s atmosphere. She led scientific planning committees, brought astronomers and engineers together, briefed government officials, and helped secure congressional approval for the project that became Hubble.
Her colleague Ed Weiler, who later served as Hubble’s chief scientist, gave Roman the nickname “Mother of Hubble.”
She retired from NASA in 1979, more than a decade before Hubble launched in 1990. Roman later directed an astronomical data center, taught science to junior high school students, and recorded audio textbooks for people with visual impairments.
Roman died in 2018 at age 93. NASA renamed its Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope in her honor in 2020.
Telescope Arrived Ahead of Schedule
More than 1,000 technicians and engineers assembled Roman from millions of individual components. NASA announced in November 2025 that the observatory had been fully assembled and was entering its final testing phase.
The telescope arrived at Kennedy Space Center in June following an eight-day, 800-mile journey by barge. On August 25, it was moved to the SpaceX hangar at Launch Complex 39A for attachment to the Falcon Heavy rocket, according to NASA.
Sunday’s targeted launch comes approximately eight months before NASA’s required launch-readiness date.
If the mission proceeds as planned, the telescope bearing Roman’s name will continue the work she began decades ago: placing powerful observatories beyond Earth’s atmosphere and expanding humanity’s view of the universe.
