At the end of November, NASA’s next great telescope — the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — officially finished construction. Teams at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland joined the inner and outer portions of the telescope, completing construction of the multi-billion-dollar telescope on schedule for launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy in May 2027.
With construction complete, the telescope will now move into final testing. Following testing, Roman will be packaged and shipped to the Kennedy Space Center, where it will launch from Launch Complex 39A. NASA expects to ship the telescope this summer.
“Completing the Roman observatory brings us to a defining moment for the agency. Transformative science depends on disciplined engineering, and this team has delivered — piece by piece, test by test — an 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,” said Amit Kshatriya, NASA’s Associate Administrator.
Roman’s history
Roman’s origins date back to 2010, when the U.S. National Research Council Decadal Survey recommended that the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) be NASA’s top priority for the next decade of astronomy. The WFIRST Design Reference Mission 1 was studied from 2011 to 2012 to inform potential telescope designs. However, in 2012, a second-hand telescope built by the Harris Corporation for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) was offered to NASA for use on a wide-field survey telescope mission like WFIRST. After a review of the design, the NRO telescope was selected, with plans for a coronagraph instrument to enable exoplanet imaging.
In February 2016, officials selected a halo orbit at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2) for the mission, after also considering a geosynchronous orbit. In late 2018, NASA awarded the contract for the construction and operation of the telescope to its Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which also manages missions like the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope.
In March 2020, NASA approved WFIRST for implementation, and in May, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced that WFIRST would be named the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope after NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy and first female executive.
Roman’s primary mirror before integration. (Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn)
The mission passed its critical design review (CDR) in 2021, updating its timeline to account for disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. A launch date was set for 2027, with all flight hardware fabrication to be completed by 2024. Construction then began on the telescope at Goddard.
In July 2022, NASA announced it had awarded Roman’s launch contract to SpaceX for a launch atop the company’s Falcon Heavy from LC-39A in Florida. The total launch cost was estimated to be around $255 million.
Construction of Roman’s satellite bus, which houses the majority of the telescope’s instruments and electronics, was completed in September 2024. By December, the telescope’s instruments and mirror assembly had been constructed and integrated onto the satellite bus. Roman also underwent a spin test in October 2024.
NASA then announced on Nov. 25, 2025, that teams at Goddard had successfully completed construction of the entire telescope, clearing the telescope for final testing and launch preparations.
Roman’s instruments and mission
Roman will carry two instruments to L2 — the Wide Field Instrument (WFI) and the Coronagraph Instrument (CGI). The WFI is a 288-megapixel camera that will provide visible and near-infrared imaging with one wideband and six narrowband filters. Using the WFI, Roman will survey significant portions of the sky, with a single WFI image roughly 200 times larger than an infrared image from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.
Roman will conduct three main surveys with the WFI, comprising approximately 75% of the telescope’s primary mission. These surveys are the High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey, the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey, and the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey. The remaining 25% of Roman and WFI’s five-year primary mission will be available for use by the astronomy community.
“The sheer volume of the data Roman will return is mind-boggling and key to a host of exciting investigations,” said Roman program scientist Dominic Benford.
The CGI instrument will serve as a technology demonstration for future exoplanet research missions that aim to directly image exoplanets. By blocking the glare from an exoplanet’s host star, the CGI can reveal exoplanets as they orbit their stars. The CGI will cover shorter wavelengths, specifically 575 nm to 825 nm, using a dual deformable starlight-suppression technology. If successful, technology similar to the CGI would be implemented on a mission like the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
Four directly-imaged exoplanets around the star HR 8799, as imaged using a coronagraph on the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. (Credit: Jason Wang (Caltech)/Christian Marois (NRC Herzberg))
“The question of ‘Are we alone?’ is a big one, and it’s an equally big task to build tools that can help us answer it. The Roman Coronagraph is going to bring us one step closer to that goal. It’s incredible that we have the opportunity to test this hardware in space on such a powerful observatory as Roman,” said Feng Zhao, Roman’s CGI manager.
After Roman arrives at L2, Roman’s team will have the CGI perform a series of pre-planned observations to ensure the instrument is working properly. The observations will take three months out of Roman’s first year and a half of operations. After these initial observations, the CGI will be available to the astronomy community.
“With Roman’s construction complete, we are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific discovery. In the mission’s first five years, it’s 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,” said Roman’s senior project scientist Julie McEnry.
(Lead image: Roman team members look at the fully constructed telescope at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshitey)
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