NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Successfully Launched to Probe Dark Universe

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope officially launched on Sunday, August 30, 2026, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral. The next-generation observatory is headed to Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, about 1.5 million kilometers away. Roman is designed to survey large swaths of the sky with a wide field of view, 100-200 times larger than Hubble's, to study dark energy, dark matter, and discover exoplanets. The mission, with a total cost of $4.3 billion, is expected to begin scientific observations as early as December.