NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on Sunday morning, marking the beginning of a mission aimed at advancing the understanding of the universe’s structure and expansion. Valued at approximately $4 billion, the observatory is named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, Nancy Grace Roman, who advocated for placing telescopes in space to unlock discoveries impossible to achieve from the ground.

Lifted by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, the telescope took off at 7:26 a.m. Eastern Time amid a dramatic display of plume and sound. The launch proceeded without incident, with all major stages functioning as planned. The spacecraft, roughly the size of a school bus and weighing comparably to a Tyrannosaurus rex, will take around three months to reach its final orbit about 1 million miles from Earth, near the direction of Mars—significantly farther than the Hubble Space Telescope’s low-Earth orbit of approximately 350 miles.

Designed as a wide-field survey instrument, the Roman telescope’s field of view is about 100 times greater than that of Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, enabling it to scan the sky up to 1,000 times faster than Hubble. Scientists expect this capability will allow Roman to catalog billions of galaxies and uncover as many as 100,000 exoplanets. Its sensitivity to subtle changes in starlight will also allow the detection of microlensing events, potentially revealing small, Earth-like planets that may reside in habitable zones.

Among the primary scientific goals are studying dark energy, the mysterious force thought to drive the accelerating expansion of the universe, and dark matter, the invisible substance believed to hold galaxies together. By measuring cosmological redshift—the stretching of light wavelengths as the universe expands—Roman aims to provide more precise data about the universe’s rate of expansion. Some researchers suggest the mission could challenge existing theories by revealing that the expansion is not accelerating as rapidly as previously thought.

The telescope is expected to deliver its first images and data early next year, beginning what is planned as a minimum five-year observational campaign. Throughout its development, the project overcame challenges including budget constraints and the COVID-19 pandemic but ultimately completed construction ahead of schedule and near initial cost estimates.

NASA officials hailed the launch as a major milestone in space science. During the post-launch press briefing, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman acknowledged the significance of the mission, and President Donald Trump called the team to offer congratulations. Scientists and engineers involved expressed excitement about the telescope’s potential to revolutionize astronomy by dramatically expanding humanity’s cosmic perspective and addressing enduring questions such as the nature of dark energy and the possibility of life beyond Earth.