NASA's Roman Space Telescope Clears Final Review Ahead of August 30 Launch

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has passed an important pre-launch milestone. Mission leaders from NASA, the Roman Space Telescope team and SpaceX met at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a Flight Readiness Review, a formal assessment of the spacecraft, rocket, launch site and overall mission status. Managers certified afterward that Roman could proceed to its final launch preparations.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting liftoff no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, August 30, from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center. Roman will launch aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket, one of SpaceX's most powerful launch vehicles, which uses three connected boosters to generate the thrust needed to carry large spacecraft into space. The telescope is already enclosed inside Falcon Heavy's fairing, the protective shell that surrounds a spacecraft during launch and shields it from aerodynamic forces and the atmosphere.

In the days ahead, teams will move the encapsulated Roman observatory to SpaceX's hangar at pad 39A, where technicians will connect it to the rocket. Once that work is complete, the assembled Falcon Heavy and Roman will be transported to the launch pad for the final steps before liftoff.

Roman is NASA's newest space telescope and is designed to give astronomers a much broader view of the cosmos than earlier missions. Scientists plan to use it to study how the universe has evolved, examine what is driving its ongoing expansion, and investigate exoplanets, planets orbiting stars beyond the solar system. By surveying large regions of the sky, Roman is expected to give researchers a powerful new way to study the universe's history and structure.