NASA launched its Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 14:26 Moscow time.
Russian news agency TASS reported that the observatory was deployed to gather data on more than two billion galaxies during an initial five-year mission. NASA hopes to extend the telescope's operational life for another five-year period after its initial run.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the mission. The commercial spaceflight company deployed the spacecraft using its heavy-lift Falcon Heavy rocket from the spaceport near Cape Canaveral.
Surveying the universe
Data collected by the spacecraft will help scientists understand how stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters formed and changed over cosmic history. Researchers also plan to use the observations to track how the universe expanded over time.
The US space agency hopes to publish the first images captured by the Nancy Grace Roman observatory in early 2027.
The spacecraft is named in honor of the late American astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, who served as NASA's first chief of astronomy during the 1960s. She was instrumental in establishing space-based observatories and planning the Hubble Space Telescope program.
Comparing Roman to Hubble
According to NASA research scientist Julie McEnery, the Nancy Grace Roman telescope will cover an area of the sky 100 times larger than Hubble.
McEnery noted that in a single month, the observatory can conduct a survey of the Milky Way and record up to 20 billion stars. The agency expects the survey to produce the largest catalogue of astronomical objects ever created.
Hubble has provided views of the cosmos since launching in 1990, but its narrower field of view limits its mapping speed. The Milky Way, the galaxy containing Earth's solar system, spans vast areas of space that require wide-field instruments to catalogue thoroughly.
It was previously reported that NASA would launch the Roman space telescope at a total cost of $4.3 billion.
