ESA · Ruimte

Roman telescope launches to survey infrared sky

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on August 30, 2026, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The telescope will survey the sky in visible to near-infrared light to investigate dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets.

The Roman telescope, a NASA-led mission with contributions from the European Space Agency (ESA), aims to reveal the nature of dark energy and dark matter, and study the diversity of exoplanets. ESA provided essential hardware, including star trackers, batteries, and detectors for the coronagraph instrument, as well as communications support through its deep-space ground station network.

Equipped with a 2.4-meter primary mirror and two instruments, the Wide Field Instrument (WFI) and a Coronagraph Instrument, Roman will perform fast and efficient surveys of large sky areas. This will enable astronomers to map galaxy clustering and study distant supernovas to trace the expansion of the Universe.

Roman is expected to provide a clearer picture of dark energy's evolution and discover thousands of new exoplanets, including cold and free-floating planets. The telescope is en route to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), approximately 1.5 million km from Earth, for an unobstructed view of the sky.

Following launch, a three-month commissioning period will involve deployments, calibrations, and tests before science operations begin. Roman is designed to scan the infrared sky for at least five years, with potential for an additional five years of operation.

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