Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope stands fully assembled, following the integration of its two major segments, in the clean room at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The mission is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026. (NASA image by Jolearra Tshiteya)
BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will unveil a look at the agency’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which recently completed construction and is wrapping up prelaunch testing. This will be one of the last opportunities to view the fully integrated flagship telescope before it ships to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center ahead of a launch planned as early as this fall.
NASA participants in the briefing include:
• NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman
• Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington
• Jamie Dunn, Roman telescope project manager, NASA Goddard
• Julie McEnery, Roman telescope senior project scientist, NASA Goddard
Subject matter experts on topics such as NASA’s Lunar Environment Monitoring Station candidate payload for the Artemis program, the DAVINCI mission to Venus, the Habitable Worlds Observatory mission concept, and the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan will also be in attendance.
Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a deep, panoramic view of the cosmos, generating never-before-seen pictures that will revolutionize our understanding of the universe.
The observatory will usher in a new era of cosmic surveys, unveiling troves of celestial objects and shedding light on some of the universe’s most profound mysteries, including phenomena we can’t see.
Roman will also showcase cutting-edge technology, including a test of the most advanced technology ever flown in space to directly image planets around nearby stars, a key step in NASA’s search for life on other worlds.
The Roman telescope is managed at NASA Goddard with participation by the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California; Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions.
The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
Contributions to Roman also are made by European Space Agency, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.