Roman Space Telescope is complete and ready for prelaunch work

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope completed assembly at Goddard Space Flight Center on April 21 and is scheduled for launch in September 2026; it is equipped with a wide-field instrument and a coronagraph for visible to near-infrared surveys.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope finished assembly at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on April 21 and is now entering its prelaunch phase. Named for NASA's first chief of astronomy, Roman is intended to complement other space observatories by surveying large areas of the sky in visible and near-infrared light. The mission team reports the project is currently ahead of schedule and under budget, with a targeted launch in September 2026. Final testing and shipment to the launch site will follow assembly completion. Key facts: - Assembly completed: Roman was declared complete at Goddard on April 21 and will move into final checkouts and shipping preparations. - Launch plan: NASA lists a September 2026 launch window and has selected a SpaceX Falcon Heavy as the launch vehicle. Reported prelaunch work includes final wrap-ups and sensor close-outs. - Observatory scale and data: Roman's primary mirror measures about 2.4 meters, similar to Hubble's, and the mission is expected to generate roughly 500 terabytes of data per year once operational. - Wide Field Instrument (WFI): The WFI is reported as a 300-megapixel visible-to-near-infrared imager with a slitless spectrometer; Roman's field of view will be far larger than Hubble's, enabling rapid surveys. - Science capabilities: Roman is designed to survey broad sky areas to find fast transients, supernovae, colliding neutron stars and to map galaxies for studies of dark matter and dark energy. The mission also includes a coronagraph that NASA reports can detect planets much fainter than their host stars. - Planned orbit: After launch and separation, Roman is planned to travel to the Sun–Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), a stable location used by other space observatories. Summary: The completed observatory marks a milestone before a period of final tests, shipment to Kennedy Space Center, and a planned Falcon Heavy launch in September 2026. Once at L2, Roman will perform wide-field visible and near-infrared surveys, producing large data volumes for studies of transient events and the large-scale structure of the universe. Undetermined at this time is the full scope of discoveries Roman may enable as operations begin.