NASA’ S NANCY GRACE ROMAN SPACE TELESCOPE, ENCAPSULATED IN THE SPACEX FALCON HEAVY ROCKET’ S FAIRING, STANDS VERTICAL ON THE PAD AT LAUNCH COMPLEX 39A AT NASA’ S KENNEDY SPACE CENTER.
PHOTO CREDIT: SPACEX
In the time it takes an eighth grader today to complete high school, the newly launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will capture images of billions of galaxies, thousands of exoplanets, and hundreds of black holes. The telescope, also known as the Roman Space Telescope, launched on August 30, 2026, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
GO BIG OR GO HOME
A telescope allows humans to view far-away objects using lenses or mirrors to reflect light and magnify images. The Roman Space Telescope will have a field of view 100x wider than the Hubble Space Telescope. While the Hubble telescope, in use since the 1970s, has produced 1.5 million never-before-seen images of space, the Roman Space Telescope will capture wide-angle images that are far larger than Hubble ' s. Additionally, the image quality will offer crisp, clear detail. The telescope will deliver pictures back to Earth 1,000 times faster than the Hubble telescope.
WHAT IS AN EXOPLANET?
Within Earth’ s solar system we have four terrestrial inner planets— Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and four outer planets— Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune— plus dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, and comets. While that may seem like a broad field of study for Earth’ s scientists, the Roman Space Telescope will greatly broaden their knowledge about the richness of space.
The Roman Space Telescope will photograph exoplanets, which are planets outside of our solar system. The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992 orbiting a pulsar( a rotating neutron star left behind after a supernova). Exoplanets can be terrestrial, like Earth, with a solid surface; they can be
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