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<\/a><\/figure>\u201cCompleting the Roman observatory brings us to a defining moment for the agency,\u201d said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. \u201cTransformative science depends on disciplined engineering, and this team has delivered\u2014piece by piece, test by test\u2014an observatory that will expand our understanding of the universe. As Roman moves into its final stage of testing following integration, we are focused on executing with precision and preparing for a successful launch on behalf of the global scientific community.\u201d<\/p>\n
After final testing, Roman will move to the launch site at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch preparations in summer 2026. Roman is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket<\/a> will send the observatory to its final destination a million miles from Earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWith Roman\u2019s construction complete, we are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific discovery,\u201d said Julie McEnery, Roman\u2019s senior project scientist at NASA Goddard. \u201cIn the mission\u2019s first five years, it\u2019s expected to unveil more than 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies. We stand to learn a tremendous amount of new information about the universe very rapidly after Roman launches.\u201d<\/p>\n Observing from space will make Roman very sensitive to infrared light \u2014 light with a longer wavelength than our eyes can see \u2014 from far across the cosmos. Pairing its crisp infrared vision with a sweeping view of space will allow astronomers to explore myriad cosmic topics, from dark matter and dark energy to distant worlds and solitary black holes<\/a>, and conduct research that would take hundreds of years using other telescopes.<\/p>\n \u201cWithin our lifetimes, a great mystery has arisen about the cosmos: why the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating. There is something fundamental about space and time we don\u2019t yet understand, and Roman was built to discover what it is,\u201d said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington. \u201cWith Roman now standing as a complete observatory, which keeps the mission on track for a potentially early launch, we are a major step closer to understanding the universe as never before. I couldn\u2019t be prouder of the teams that have gotten us to this point.\u201d<\/p>\n Double vision<\/strong><\/p>\n Roman is equipped with two instruments: the Wide Field Instrument<\/a> and the Coronagraph Instrument<\/a> technology demonstration.<\/p>\n The coronagraph will demonstrate new technologies for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from distant stars and make it easier for scientists to see the faint light from planets in orbit around them. The Coronagraph aims to photograph worlds<\/a> and dusty disks<\/a> around nearby stars in visible light to help us see giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far.<\/p>\n \u201cThe question of \u2018Are we alone?\u2019 is a big one, and it\u2019s an equally big task to build tools that can help us answer it,\u201d said Feng Zhao, the Roman Coronagraph Instrument manager at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. \u201cThe Roman Coronagraph is going to bring us one step closer to that goal. It\u2019s incredible that we have the opportunity to test this hardware in space on such a powerful observatory as Roman.\u201d<\/p>\n The coronagraph team will conduct a series of pre-planned observations for three months spread across the mission\u2019s first year-and-a-half of operations, after which the mission may conduct additional observations based on scientific community input.<\/p>\n The Wide Field Instrument is a 288-megapixel camera that will unveil the cosmos all the way from our solar system to near the edge of the observable universe. Using this instrument, each Roman image will capture a patch of the sky bigger than the apparent size of a full moon. The mission will gather data hundreds of times faster than NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope, adding up to 20,000 terabytes<\/a> (20 petabytes) over the course of its five-year primary mission.<\/p>\n \u201cThe sheer volume of the data Roman will return is mind-boggling and key to a host of exciting investigations,\u201d said Dominic Benford, Roman\u2019s program scientist at NASA Headquarters.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/figure>