{"id":82255,"date":"2026-04-22T21:13:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T21:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/nasa-targets-a-september-launch-for-its-next-big-space-telescope\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T21:13:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T21:13:19","slug":"nasa-targets-a-september-launch-for-its-next-big-space-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/nasa-targets-a-september-launch-for-its-next-big-space-telescope\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA targets a September launch for its next big space telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-article-body=\"true\">\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">NASA&#8217;s next eye into the cosmos is due to leave our planet later this year. The agency says it&#8217;s targeting an early September launch for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Roman (for short) has a field of view 100 times larger than Hubble&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">The September date is the earliest possible launch for Roman. NASA says it will go up (aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket) no later than May 2027.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named after NASA&#8217;s first chief astronomer and &#8220;mother&#8221; of Hubble, was introduced in 2016. (Back then, it was known as the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, or WFIRST.) The telescope&#8217;s mirror is roughly the same size as Hubble&#8217;s, but it can capture sections of the sky at least 100 times larger than its predecessor.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"relative col-body mb-4\">\n<div class=\"relative\"><img alt=\"The Roman telescope, sitting inside a white NASA hangar\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"fig-image-round\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/TlSfrx25b3LGMnzmXER59A--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTU0MA--\/https:\/\/d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net\/images\/user-uploaded\/roman_5128.jpg\"\/><button aria-label=\"View larger image\" class=\"group absolute bottom-3 right-3 size-10 md:size-[50px] lg:inset-0 lg:size-full lg:bg-transparent\" data-ylk=\"elm:expand;itc:1;sec:image-lightbox;slk:lightbox-open;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;expand&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;image-lightbox&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;lightbox-open&quot;,&quot;yHasCommerce&quot;:false}\"><span class=\"absolute bottom-0 right-0 rounded-full bg-white p-3 opacity-100 shadow-elevation-3 transition-opacity duration-300 group-hover:block group-hover:opacity-100 md:p-[17px] lg:bottom-6 lg:right-6 lg:bg-white\/90 lg:p-5 lg:opacity-0 lg:shadow-none\"><svg viewbox=\"0 0 22 22\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"size-4 lg:size-6\" width=\"22\" height=\"22\"><path d=\"M12.372.92c0-.506.41-.916.915-.916L21 0l-.004 7.712a.917.917 0 0 1-1.832 0V3.183l-6.827 6.828-1.349-1.348 6.828-6.828h-4.529a.915.915 0 0 1-.915-.915M1.835 17.816l6.828-6.828 1.349 1.349-6.829 6.827h4.529a.915.915 0 0 1 0 1.831L0 21l.004-7.713a.916.916 0 0 1 1.831 0z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/button><dialog aria-label=\"common.MODAL_DIALOG_A11Y_LABEL\" aria-modal=\"true\" class=\"fixed inset-0 z-[4] size-full max-h-none max-w-none bg-white hidden\"\/><\/div><figcaption class=\"relative text-[0.875rem]\/[1.25rem] figure-caption mt-1 line-clamp-2 mt-2.5 md:mt-2 pr-2.5\">\n<p><span class=\"[&amp;_p]:inline\"\/><span>NASA<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">&#8220;Roman will work in tandem with NASA observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, which are designed to zoom in on rare transient objects once they&#8217;ve been identified, but seldom if ever discover them,&#8221; Julie McEnery, Roman&#8217;s senior project scientist, said in 2023. &#8220;Roman&#8217;s much larger field of view will reveal many such objects that were previously unknown. And since we&#8217;ve never had an observatory like this scanning the cosmos before, we could even find entirely new classes of objects and events.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">After leaving our atmosphere, Roman will set course for a vantage point nearly 1 million miles from Earth. There, it will rely on a pair of instruments to study space. The first is a 300.8-megapixel camera that captures light from visible to near-infrared. There&#8217;s also a high-contrast coronagraph that will allow it to capture exoplanets that would otherwise be blocked by starlight.<\/p>\n<p class=\"col-body mb-4 leading-7 text-[18px] md:leading-8 break-words min-w-0 charcoal-color\">Roman\u2019s mission: &#8220;to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets and astrophysics.&#8221; Despite decades of study, astronomers know surprisingly little about dark energy, which makes up about 68 percent of the universe\u2019s contents. And while scientific discoveries are cool and all, you\u2019ll be pleased to know that Roman is also sure to beam back more dazzling pictures of our cosmos.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA&#8217;s next eye into the cosmos is due to leave our planet later this year. The agency says it&#8217;s targeting an early September launch for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Roman (for short) has a field of view 100 times larger than Hubble&#8217;s. The September date is the earliest possible launch for Roman. NASA [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":82256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_daextam_enable_autolinks":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/62b8fa72-db25-4d73-a8a8-7d3d35f58e43.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}