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yesterday

NASA Completes Roman Space Telescope Construction as Final Testing Begins

The mission is running ahead of schedule with a possible fall 2026 launch window.

Technicians in a large clean room at Goddard Space Flight Center watch as the two halves of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope are joined on Nov. 25, completing construction on the observatory ahead of schedule. Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya

Overview

  • Engineers finished integration on Nov. 25 at NASA Goddard, and the observatory now enters a final test campaign before its move to Kennedy Space Center.
  • NASA’s formal commitment remains a launch by May 2027 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, while recent agency communications point to the potential for liftoff as early as fall 2026.
  • Roman carries two instruments: a wide-field infrared camera for panoramic surveys and an experimental coronagraph technology demonstration to directly image faint, Jupiter-like exoplanets.
  • The five-year primary mission centers on three core surveys expected to occupy about 75% of observing time: the High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey, the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey, and the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey.
  • NASA estimates suggest the mission’s early results could include more than 100,000 discovered exoplanets, systematic monitoring of millions of stars, and mapping of over a billion galaxies.