The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

A wide-field infrared space observatory

Launched on 30 August 2026, Roman carries a 2.4-metre mirror, Hubble's size, but its 300-megapixel infrared camera takes in a patch of sky larger than the full Moon in every image. Within a few years it is to map enough galaxies to measure dark energy and dark matter, and to count thousands of exoplanets.

It is named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief of astronomy, known as the mother of Hubble. Like the James Webb Space Telescope it goes to the L2 point, 1.5 million kilometres from Earth on the side away from the Sun, where it circles on a halo orbit. Its solar panels, always facing the Sun, double as its sunshade.