NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team now is targeting as soon as early September 2026 for launch, ahead of the agency’s commitment to flight no later than May 2027.

“Roman’s accelerated development is a true success story of what we can achieve when public investment, institutional expertise, and private enterprise come together to take on the near-impossible missions that change the world,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who announced the update at a news conference on April 21 at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Roman will pair a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to survey deep, vast swaths of sky. While the mission was designed with dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets in mind, Roman’s unprecedented observational capability will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to explore all kinds of cosmic topics.

By the end of its five-year primary mission, Roman is expected to amass a 20,000-terabyte data archive. Scientists can draw on it to identify and study 100,000 exoplanets, hundreds of millions of galaxies, billions of stars, and rare objects and phenomena — including some that astronomers have never witnessed before.

Roman will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA and SpaceX will share more information about a specific launch date, and the agency will continue to share updates concerning prelaunch preparations as new information becomes available.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, and scientists from various research institutions.

To learn more about the Roman mission, visit:

https://nasa.gov/roman

Media contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940