The Roman telescope and its payload are scheduled to lift off aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Sunday (Aug. 30) at 7:26 a.m. EDT from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, according to NASA. A few hours later, the telescope will be released from the rocket's second stage and be exposed to the vacuum of space for the first time.
As of Thursday morning (Aug. 27), the National Weather Service forecasts a 50% chance of thunderstorms at Kennedy Space Center Sunday, so weather could delay the launch. If that happens, a second launch window is available Monday (Aug. 31) at 7:22 a.m. EDT, when there is a reduced risk of thunderstorms.
Roman stands 42 feet tall and weighs around the same as a fully grown T. rex. This photo was taken on Dec. 4, 2025, shortly after the spacecraft was fully constructed. (Image credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya)
The Roman Space Telescope is NASA's latest flagship observatory. It follows the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which launched in 2021, and the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in orbit since 1990. Rather than replacing those spacecraft, Roman will work alongside them to help scientists scour the skies like never before.
Roman was fully completed in December 2025, almost a decade after construction began and within its initial $4.3 billion budget (less than half what JWST cost). Since then, it has been moved more than 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) from Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and undergone a series of final checks in NASA's "clean rooms." Having initially been slated for a 2027 liftoff, the telescope is technically launching ahead of schedule.
Roman was encased in its protective fairing earlier this week, ahead of its proposed launch on Sunday (Aug. 30). (Image credit: NASA/Sydney Rohde (Rocz))Roman's initial mission will last five years, but experts hope it could survive at least twice that long. Some space telescopes far outlast their initial missions; for example, Hubble is more than two decades past its original mission parameters, and NASA's recently doomed Swift Observatory lasted 10 times longer than predicted.
What makes Roman special?
But the telescope's secret weapon is arguably its coronagraph, which can block out the light from distant stars, allowing Roman to see fainter objects, such as the exoplanets that orbit these stars. Until now, scientists' main way of finding alien worlds was to wait for them to pass in front of, or transit, their home star, but Roman will be able to directly image exoplanets at almost any time in their orbital cycles. (Exoplanets remain out of view when they are directly behind their home stars.)
Roman's Wide Field Instrument utilizes a 7.9-foot-wide mirror to focus infrared light into a 288-megapixel camera that has a field of view 100,000 times greater than Hubble's. (Image credit: NASA/Chris Gunn)However, the telescope will also conduct long-term surveys that will help astronomers accurately map the Milky Way and find extremely distant galaxies, potentially helping scientists solve the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy that currently underpin a "cosmological crisis" surrounding the universe's expansion. And as with any new space telescope, scientists will likely find novel ways of using Roman once it is in operation.
Roman will launch aboard one of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rockets, which has a 100% success rate across its 12 launches to date. (Image credit: SpaceX)The spacecraft will beam roughly 1.4 terabytes of data — roughly 10 times the storage capacity of an average smartphone — to ground stations across Earth every day, according to the fact sheet.
When will we see Roman's first photos?
Roman will launch from Launch Complex TK on Sunday (Aug. 30). This photo shows one of these rockets, equipped with NASA's Europa Clipper probe, lifting off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 14, 2024. (Image credit: CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
But first, Roman has to travel to its Lagrange point, which is roughly four times farther away than the moon. This could take several weeks, although no exact timeline has been provided.
RELATED STORIESOnce Roman is in position, there will be a roughly 90-day commissioning period, during which the telescope will fully power up its instruments and run a series of diagnostic tests to ensure everything is in order before its mission truly begins.
NASA representatives have promised that "data from all of Roman's surveys will be made public as soon as it is processed, with no periods of exclusive access," so once the images are ready, everyone will be able to see them.
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