NASA and SpaceX are scheduled to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on Sunday, according to a NASA statement. The Roman Space Telescope, formerly known as the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, is a space observatory designed to conduct infrared surveys of the sky to investigate dark energy, exoplanet atmospheres, and the structure of the universe. It will be placed into a heliocentric orbit. The launch will be carried out by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which has been selected for its reliability and capacity to deliver the telescope to the desired orbit. NASA officials said the telescope will expand the agency’s capabilities for astrophysical research, while SpaceX representatives confirmed that the launch vehicle has completed all required pre‑flight preparations. The launch marks a milestone in NASA’s astrophysics program and will enable new observations that could improve understanding of cosmic acceleration and the distribution of matter in the universe.
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The European Space Agency (ESA) announced in August 2026 that it has awarded the first contracts of its European Launcher Challenge to develop new European launch vehicles. The European Launcher Challenge was launched to stimulate domestic industry and reduce reliance on foreign launch providers, following a period of limited European launch capability. The contracts cover the development of launch vehicle designs, ground infrastructure, and associated testing programs. ESA selected several European aerospace companies to carry out the work, with funding amounts not disclosed. The initiative aims to produce a reliable launch system capable of delivering payloads to low Earth orbit and beyond. The awarded contracts represent the initial step in a multi‑year program intended to strengthen Europe's space launch capacity.
Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch Sunday at 7:26 a.m.
Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch Sunday at 7:26 a.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. The mission, valued at $4.3 billion, will operate for five years and will study dark matter, dark energy, and the large‑scale structure of the universe. The telescope uses a 7.9‑foot mirror originally built for a classified spy satellite and donated by the National Reconnaissance Office; the mirror is the same size as Hubble’s but ground for a wider field of view. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the telescope will give Earth a new atlas of the universe. NASA science chief Niki Fox said the observatory will deliver data at an unprecedented rate. The spacecraft carries a 300‑megapixel wide‑field infrared camera and a coronagraph that can block starlight to detect faint planets. Its total data output is expected to exceed 2,500 terabytes over the primary mission, far more than Hubble’s 172 terabytes collected in 30 years. Three core surveys are planned: the High‑Latitude Wide‑Area Survey will map about a billion galaxies across 12 percent of the sky; the High‑Latitude Time‑Domain Survey will repeatedly image 90 full moons to capture transient events such as supernovae and black‑hole activity; the Galactic Bulge Time‑Domain Survey will examine the Milky Way’s central bulge for microlensing signals that may reveal tens of thousands of exoplanets. The mission will also search for exoplanets by directly imaging reflected light from Jupiter‑size planets around Earth‑like stars. Commissioning is expected to take three to four months, after which science operations will begin. The telescope will travel to Lagrange point 2, roughly one million miles from Earth, where it will require minimal fuel. The project came in ahead of schedule and under budget despite the cost of building and operating the observatory. Researchers hope the data will resolve the Hubble tension and may indicate that dark energy varies over time.
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is attached to a Falcon Heavy rocket and scheduled to launch on August 31, 2026, from Kennedy Space Center.
The mission follows a 2010 National Academies Decadal Survey recommendation for a wide‑field infrared survey telescope, originally called WFIRST, and was upgraded in 2015 using a 2.4‑meter optical system donated by the National Reconnaissance Office. The telescope passed its critical design review in September 2021, completed spacecraft integration in 2024‑2025, and arrived at Kennedy Space Center in July 2026.
The observatory will operate at the Sun‑Earth L2 Lagrange point alongside the James Webb Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Euclid observatory. Its five‑year primary mission allocates 75 % of observing time to three core community surveys: the Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey, the High‑Latitude Time Domain Survey, and the High‑Latitude Wide Area Survey. The Galactic Bulge survey will use microlensing to detect exoplanets, including free‑floating planets, and to study stellar masses and black holes. The High‑Latitude Time Domain Survey will monitor type Ia supernovae and other transient events to improve constraints on the universe’s expansion and dark energy. The High‑Latitude Wide Area Survey will map millions of galaxies to study large‑scale structure and dark matter. The Wide Field Instrument contains 18 H4RG detectors with more than 300 million pixels and uses a filter wheel for imaging and spectroscopy, while the Coronagraph Instrument will demonstrate high‑contrast imaging for exoplanet detection. The mission is designed to be serviceable and has enough fuel for roughly a decade.
Launch is set for 7:26 a.m. EDT on August 31, 2026, and will be streamed live on NASA’s YouTube channel. The mission continues a series of flagship astrophysics missions that began with the James Webb Space Telescope’s 2021 launch and aims to expand exoplanet catalogs and refine cosmological models.
President Donald Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the four Artemis II astronauts — Cmdr Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian Jeremy Hansen — at a ceremony held at NASA’s Johnson Space Center on Friday. The award recognizes the crew’s April lunar flyby, which set a record distance of 4,067 miles and marked the first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years. The flight used NASA’s Orion capsule launched on the Space Launch System rocket from Kennedy Space Center. The mission demonstrated capabilities for future Artemis missions, including a planned lunar landing in 2028 and a sustainable moon base near the lunar south pole. The Congressional Space Medal of Honor is the United States’ highest honor for astronauts; only 30 individuals have received it, including Neil Armstrong, Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Frank Borman, and most recently Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken in 2023 under President Joe Biden. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman and other dignitaries attended the ceremony. Trump announced the creation of a U.S. Space Academy for the Space Force, NASA and commercial partners, stating that the academy’s location had yet to be determined. He referred to the astronauts as “four intrepid space heroes,” a phrase attributed to him. Isaacman said the crew served as ambassadors to the stars. NASA deputy administrator Matthew Anderson noted a “second space race” involving China’s interest in the lunar south pole. The ceremony ended with the astronauts presenting Trump with a blue flight jacket bearing space patches, which they had promised during a prior meeting in the Oval Office. Trump then called crew members aboard the International Space Station and briefly spoke with two of their spouses.