NEXT SPACEFLIGHT

Status

Roman Space Telescope

Launch Time
NET May, 2027
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Rocket

Falcon Heavy
Image Credit: SpaceX
SpaceX
Status: Active
Price: $97.0 million
Liftoff Thrust: 22,819 kN
Payload to LEO: 63,800 kg
Payload to GTO: 26,700 kg
Stages: 2
Strap-ons: 2
Rocket Height: 70.0 m
Fairing Diameter: 5.2 m
Fairing Height: 13.0 m

Mission Details

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

The Roman Space Telescope is a NASA observatory designed to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. The telescope has a primary mirror that is 2.4 meters in diameter (7.9 feet) and is the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope's primary mirror. The Roman Space Telescope will have two instruments, the Wide Field Instrument, and the Coronagraph Instrument.

The Wide Field Instrument will have a field of view that is 100 times greater than the Hubble infrared instrument, capturing more of the sky with less observing time. As the primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument will measure light from a billion galaxies over the course of the mission lifetime. It will perform a microlensing survey of the inner Milky Way to find ~2,600 exoplanets. The Coronagraph Instrument will perform high-contrast imaging and spectroscopy of individual nearby exoplanets. (https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/about.html)

Payloads: 1
Heliocentric Orbit

Location

LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA