Falcon Heavy | Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
Falcon Heavy • Falcon
📝 Mission Description
Falcon Heavy Set to Launch NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in 2026
On October 31, 2026, SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled to lift off, carrying NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into orbit. This mission represents a pivotal step in advancing our understanding of the universe, combining cutting-edge telescope technology with one of the most powerful launch vehicles in operation today.
At the heart of the mission is the Roman Space Telescope, an infrared observatory designed to tackle some of cosmology's biggest questions. Named after NASA's first chief astronomer, the telescope features a 2.4-meter primary mirror, matching the size of Hubble's but with a vastly expanded field of view. Its Wide-Field Instrument (WFI), a 300.8-megapixel camera, captures images in visible and near-infrared bands with Hubble-like sharpness across a 0.28 square degree area—100 times larger than Hubble's imaging cameras. This capability will enable surveys of billions of galaxies, mapping cosmic structure on unprecedented scales. Complementing the WFI is the Coronagraphic Instrument (CGI), which uses advanced starlight-suppression techniques to image exoplanets directly. By blocking a star's glare, the CGI can detect faint planets in visible and near-infrared light, potentially identifying Earth-like worlds. The telescope's primary objectives include hunting for exoplanets via gravitational microlensing, where a foreground star's gravity bends light from a distant one, revealing hidden planets. It will also probe dark energy's role in the universe's expansion, test general relativity, and measure spacetime curvature, providing data that could reshape our models of cosmic evolution.
Powering this ambitious payload is the Falcon Heavy, SpaceX's heavy-lift rocket derived from the Falcon 9 family. Standing 70 meters tall with a diameter of 3.7 meters, it consists of three Falcon 9 first-stage cores strapped together, generating over 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff from 27 Merlin engines. The rocket's second stage, powered by a single Merlin vacuum engine, delivers payloads to various orbits. Fully reusable in its side boosters and center core (though recovery success varies), Falcon Heavy can loft up to 64 metric tons to low Earth orbit or 26.7 tons to geostationary transfer orbit. For the Roman mission, it will target a sun-synchronous orbit, optimizing the telescope's infrared observations by minimizing Earth's thermal interference.
Falcon Heavy's performance history underscores its reliability for high-stakes missions
ℹ️ Official Details
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a NASA infrared space telescope with a 2.4 m (7.9 ft) wide field of view primary mirror and two scientific instruments. The Wide-Field Instrument (WFI) is a 300.8-megapixel multi-band visible and near-infrared camera, providing a sharpness of images comparable to that achieved by the Hubble Space Telescope over a 0.28 square degree field of view, 100 times larger than imaging cameras on the Hubble. The Coronagraphic Instrument (CGI) is a high-contrast, small field of view camera and spectrometer covering visible and near-infrared wavelengths using novel starlight-suppression technology. Roman objectives include a search for extra-solar planets using gravitational microlensing, and probing the expansion history of the Universe and the growth of cosmic structure, with the goal of measuring the effects of dark energy, the consistency of general relativity, and the curvature of spacetime.