NASA's Roman Space Telescope Completes Launch Dress Rehearsal Ahead of Aug. 30 Liftoff

NASA's next great observatory cleared a key launch milestone this week, running a full dress rehearsal ahead of its Aug. 30 liftoff aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy.

NASA's next great observatory just cleared one of its final hurdles. On Thursday, the team preparing the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope completed a mission dress rehearsal from Florida's Space Coast, running a full end-to-end simulation of launch-day operations.

During the exercise, Roman teams practiced powering up the spacecraft, simulated fueling operations for the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, ran mock weather briefings, and worked through troubleshooting scenarios. Crews were on console across NASA and SpaceX facilities at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Center, testing everything from communications to mission systems.

The telescope is now targeting liftoff no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 30, from Launch Complex 39A aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. Once in space, Roman will turn its wide-field instrument on three of astronomy's biggest questions: the nature of dark energy, the census of planets outside our solar system, and the infrared structure of the cosmos. Its mirror matches Hubble's size, but its field of view is at least 100 times larger — wide enough to potentially measure light from a billion galaxies.

Sources: NASA Science | NASA — Roman Space Telescope