9 Things to Know About NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch at 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 30. It is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman (1925–2018), NASA's first chief of astronomy, who championed space-based observatories and drove the Great Observatories program that included Hubble, Chandra, Compton, and Spitzer.

Roman will combine a large field of view with infrared vision to survey wide, deep swaths of sky, aiming to study dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets. Its large surveys will also enable broad additional science, from outer solar system objects and exploding stars to black holes and billions of galaxies. All data will be released publicly as soon as it is processed.

The spacecraft will travel to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), about 1 million miles away, the same location as the James Webb Space Telescope. At L2, gravitational balance provides a stable orbit with minimal fuel use. Roman will follow a large orbit around L2, kept well clear of Webb.

More than 1.3 million people submitted their names to be carried on a plaque aboard the spacecraft.

Roman's primary mission lifetime is five years, with design support for an additional five-year extended mission; fuel is expected to be the limiting factor.