Roman Space Telescope Begins Three-Month Journey to Its Deep-Space Post

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on August 30, is now on a three-month journey to the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. The location also hosts NASA's James Webb Space Telescope and Europe's Euclid probe, though officials say the observatories' large orbits will keep them well apart.

The 42-foot-long Roman carries two science instruments. The first, the Wide Field Instrument, is a 300-megapixel infrared camera designed to look far back in time and help trace how the universe has expanded. The second, the Coronagraph Instrument, is a technology demonstration that blocks the light of distant stars to reveal planets almost a billion times fainter than their host star. NASA says L2's stable, distant location will keep Roman's instruments cool and provide a tenfold improvement over Hubble in much of the data it gathers.

Before it can begin observing, Roman must complete "commissioning" -- turning on, calibrating and testing its systems and science gear. About an hour and 23 minutes after launch, the spacecraft's solar panels and sunshade deployed, powering its systems; in the coming days its antenna will swing out and a deployable aperture cover will move into place to protect the primary mirror. According to the nonprofit Planetary Society, Roman should be ready to begin science operations in early 2027.

Roman's five-year primary mission is expected to discover thousands of new exoplanets and shed light on dark energy and dark matter. NASA's space telescopes have often outlasted their planned lifespans: Hubble is still working more than 36 years after launch, following five servicing missions between 1993 and 2009, while the Chandra X-ray Observatory remains operational more than 25 years after it launched.