A $۴.۳bn space telescope that Donald Trump tried to kill is set to lift off from Florida early on Sunday as Nasa embarks on the next stage of its quest to unlock the secrets of the universe.
The Nancy Grace Roman space telescope survived two rounds of proposed White House budget cuts, and will embark on a million-mile journey into deep space from a launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center at ۷.۲۶am ET, barring late technical issues or intervention from Florida’s notoriously capricious summer weather.
Searching chiefly for exoplanets and clues about planetary formation, it is set to join the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes in the annals of Nasa’s storied history of space exploration.
But as next-generation equipment almost ۱۰ years in the making, the Roman telescope, named for the space agency’s first chief of astronomy, who died in ۲۰۱۸, is many times more powerful than Hubble and will work to enhance the output of its stablemates, both of which continue to operate.
According to Nasa, its ۳۰۰-megapixel infrared camera will give Roman the same sharpness and resolution as Hubble, but with a field of view at least ۱۰۰ times larger. The agency says each image will capture a patch of sky about ۱.۵ times bigger than the apparent size of a full moon.
Roman also contains a specialized instrument known as a coronagraph that blocks glare from stars and makes it easier to photograph planets around them in detail.
Nasa said it expected the images would reveal “giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far”.
Roman’s destination is Lagrange point ۲, a “parking spot” in space about one million miles from Earth, where it will operate in the same complex sun-Earth orbit as Webb, though the two telescopes will remain far apart.
It is not entirely a successor to Hubble and Webb, which were launched in ۱۹۹۰ and ۲۰۲۱, respectively, but was designed to support and advance their missions, while making discoveries of its own.
Nasa said Roman’s large panoramas would “uncover interesting targets that Hubble could follow up on using infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light to offer a more comprehensive view”, while Webb “can then use its larger mirror and more powerful vision to deliver even more detailed, ultra-sharp observations”.
Roman, meanwhile, can view regions around objects Hubble or Webb observe “to offer context”. Its imagery, which Nasa expects will first come in early ۲۰۲۷ after months of calibration and tests in the telescope’s final orbit, will be made immediately public, allowing the agency, professional researchers and amateur astronomers an unprecedented opportunity for analysis.
“From objects in our outer solar system and exploding stars, to growing black holes and galaxies by the billions, very little will be beyond Roman’s reach,” Nasa said in an online explanation of the telescope’s initial five-year mission, which could be extended to ۱۰.
“Roman will pair a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to scan vast, deep swaths of sky. This flagship mission is designed to help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, and planets outside our solar system.”
Julie McEnery, Nasa’s senior project scientist for the Roman mission, said the need for it was conceived at the end of the last century, although it was only in ۲۰۱۶ that Nasa began the development stage, and ۲۰۲۰ before it finally approved the entire project and commenced construction.
“One of the motivations for Roman was the discovery that our universe is not just expanding, but that expansion is accelerating,” she said in an interview on Thursday with Sophia Roberts, an astrophysics video producer at Nasa’s Goddard space flight center in Maryland.
“It’s like if you were to throw a ball in the air, and instead of the ball coming back down, it just keeps shooting away. There’s something really fundamental that we don’t understand about the nature of our universe itself, and Roman is purpose-built to address and provide the data that we need to address these questions.”
If the US president had his way, Roman would never have made it to the launchpad. A ۲۰۲۵ White House proposal for what analysts said would be “extinction level cuts” to Nasa’s science budget, including the axing of the Roman project, was roundly rejected in January by Congress, which restored the agency’s ۲۰۲۶ funding level to $۲۴.۴bn.
Seemingly undeterred, the Trump administration is trying again for the ۲۰۲۷ fiscal year, seeking a ۲۳% reduction in Nasa’s overall budget to $۱۸.۸bn, and a ۴۶% chop for science projects that the Planetary Society said would lead to the termination of more than ۵۰ missions.
Sunday’s scheduled launch of Roman marks the final flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, which Elon Musk’s company is phasing out along with its smaller Falcon ۹ rockets to concentrate on Starship, its versatile new workhorse that is planned to eventually carry humans to Mars.
