NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch at 7:26 a.m. EDT on August 30, 2026 from Kennedy Space Center. The mission, named for NASA’s first chief astronomer Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, will operate at the Sun‑Earth L2 Lagrange point about one million miles from Earth, the same location as the James Webb Space Telescope. Its primary objective is to study dark matter, dark energy and exoplanets with a wide‑field infrared capability.

The telescope will have a five‑year primary mission with a potential five‑year extension, limited by its fuel supply. It carries a 300‑megapixel Wide Field Infrared Camera that provides a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s, and a Coronagraph Instrument designed for direct imaging of planets around other stars. All data will be released to the public after processing.

Roman will work with existing observatories, including the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission, and the ground‑based Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Its large surveys are intended to identify targets for follow‑up observations and to refine data from other missions. The launch will be streamed live on NASA’s website, and the first science images are expected in early 2027 after a three‑month commissioning period.