On April 23, NASA announced that the Roman telescope could be launched as early as September this year, ahead of the original target of May 2027.

“Accelerating Roman’s development demonstrates the power of collaboration between public investment, organizational expertise, and private-sector innovation in tackling ambitious missions,” said NASA Director Jared Isaacman during a press briefing on April 21 at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

The Roman telescope is designed with a wide field of view and high-resolution infrared capabilities, enabling surveys of vast and distant regions of space. Its primary mission is to investigate dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets.

Over its planned five-year operation, the telescope is expected to collect around 20,000 terabytes of data, helping scientists discover approximately 100,000 exoplanets, hundreds of millions of galaxies, billions of stars, and rare cosmic phenomena.

The launch will be carried out using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA and SpaceX will announce the exact launch date in the near future.

The Roman project is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, with contributions from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Caltech/IPAC, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and other research organizations.

Meanwhile, NASA continues to advance the Artemis program following the successful Artemis II mission around the Moon.

On April 21, the agency transported the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket for Artemis III from the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The core stage, accounting for about four-fifths of the rocket’s height, includes liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks, interstage structures, and the forward section. Once in Florida, engineers will assemble and integrate the stage vertically before completing the rocket.

“This is the backbone of Artemis III. We’ve taken another major step toward returning humans to the Moon and, eventually, sending them to Mars,” said Lori Glaze, NASA’s Acting Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development.

When completed, the SLS core stage will stand about 64.6 meters tall and hold more than 2.7 million liters of supercooled propellant to power four RS-25 engines. During launch, the core stage will fire for over eight minutes, propelling the Orion spacecraft and its crew into orbit.

Artemis III is scheduled for launch in 2027, with the goal of landing astronauts on the lunar surface once again. NASA hopes the Artemis program will lay the foundation for long-term missions and future crewed journeys to Mars.