A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifted NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope off Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. ET on August 30, sending the flagship observatory on a three-month trip toward the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2.
NASA said ground controllers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, started receiving telemetry seven minutes after liftoff. The telescope separated from Falcon Heavy’s upper stage 31 minutes into the flight, and the two side boosters returned to Landing Zones 2 and 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The center core was expended as planned.
The launch was the fourth primary NASA mission on Falcon Heavy. NASA’s Launch Services Program had worked with SpaceX earlier this year to pull the date forward after the observatory finished ahead of schedule. SpaceX had listed the 7:26 a.m. ET Sunday window from pad 39A, with a Monday backup that the flight did not need.
Roman is built to map dark energy and dark matter with a wide-field infrared view at least 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope, enough to chart billions of galaxies and hunt exoplanets and black holes once it reaches L2 about one million miles from Earth. NASA confirmed the solar array and lower instrument sunshade deployed an hour and 23 minutes after launch. First images are expected in early 2027.
Both side boosters landed back at the Cape, a repeat of the synchronized return Falcon Heavy posted in April. Roman now has a three-month commissioning cruise to L2 before those sky surveys begin.
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