Nasa launches Nancy Grace Roman telescope to explore Universe’s mysteries
BBC Homepage
Skip to content
Accessibility Help
Your account
Home
News
Sport
Earth
Reel
Worklife
Travel
Culture
Future
Music
TV
Weather
Sounds
More menu
More menu
Search BBC
Home
News
…
Nasa’s powerful new space telescope blasted off into space from Florida
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
This video can not be played
Figure caption: Watch: Nasa launches Roman telescope from Kennedy Space Center
By Grace Eliza Goodwin
Published 30 August 2026, 16:28 BST
Updated 1 minute ago
Nasa’s powerful next-generation telescope has blasted off into space from its launchpad in Florida, with a mission to explore dark energy, black holes and other mysteries of the Universe.
The Nancy Grace Roman telescope will capture vast panoramic views of space, boasting a field of vision 100 times larger than both the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, Nasa states.
The mission begins with a 100-day journey to a vantage point roughly one million miles from Earth, where the telescope will then start charting exoplanets.
"Roman is going to change the way we look at the Universe," said Nicky Fox, a Nasa administrator. "It is going to discover tens of thousands, maybe even 100,000 new exoplanets."
US President Donald Trump dialled in to Nasa’s news conference on Sunday morning to congratulate the scientists working on the project.
"You’re the hottest in space, and we have the hottest country anywhere in the world," Trump said. "So, let’s keep it all going. You’re a big part of it."
The successful launch took place on Sunday morning local time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
"What a glorious dawn launch," Jackie Townsend, a project manager on Nasa’s Roman telescope, said at the news conference after liftoff. "The ride was magnificent. It put us right where we wanted to be."
About 30 minutes after launch, Roman separated from its SpaceX rocket and is now en route to its orbiting point around a million miles away.
Astronomer Jenifer Millard said the telescope will be four times further from Earth than the Moon is, where many infrared space cameras operate to pick up "heat light". She noted this distance ensures infrared light from the Moon and Earth doesn’t interfere with the camera’s view.
Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, also orbits around a million miles from Earth but has a more limited field of vision. Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, orbits at about 300 miles above Earth’s surface.
While Roman will gaze outward into the Universe, scientists also anticipate it will uncover thousands of new planets within our own galaxy.
The telescope is named after physicist Nancy Grace Roman, Nasa’s first chief astronomer in the 1960s and its first female executive. She was instrumental in getting the Hubble Space Telescope approved by US Congress and later noted its most intriguing discovery was dark energy.
The new telescope is similarly expected to revolutionize our understanding of the Universe, including through investigating dark energy.
