NASA targets Aug. 30 launch for $4 billion Roman space telescope

NASA is preparing to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Aug. 30, sending its next flagship observatory into space on a multiyear mission to chart the cosmos. The roughly $4 billion telescope is set to lift off from Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy and head toward a point about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Roman’s wide field of view, far larger than Hubble’s, is designed to survey vast areas of sky, catalog astronomical objects, find thousands of exoplanets and tens of thousands of supernovas, and help scientists study dark matter and dark energy. The observatory is named for Nancy Grace Roman, the astronomer often called the “Mother of Hubble.”