NASA’s $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, equipped with a 300-megapixel camera sighted through a refurbished spy mirror, launched Sunday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a mission to reveal the mysterious forces driving the Universe.
The new mission will extend the vision of NASA’s other famous observatories, providing a field of view 100 times wider than the Hubble Space Telescope and complementing the groundbreaking work of the James Webb Space Telescope. Roman is just the second NASA-led astrophysics mission to launch this century, following the launch of Webb in 2021.
Unlike Webb, which suffered many years of delays before reaching space, Roman arrived at the launch pad nine months before NASA’s commitment to send it skyward by May 2027.
