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NASA Launches Roman Space Telescope on Three-Month Journey to L2

Courtroom-sketch editorial illustration of a rocket climbing in silhouette before a bright low sun with a dense exhaust plume, rendered in warm ochre and slate-blue pastel strokes.

NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday. The spacecraft separated 31 minutes later and began a roughly three-month, one-million-mile journey to the Sun-Earth L2 region, after telemetry and initial deployments were confirmed. Roman will use a 300-megapixel infrared camera to study dark matter, dark energy and exoplanets, surveying the universe about 1,000 times faster than Hubble and returning an expected 1.4 terabytes of data daily. NASA expects its first images in early 2027.

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