Updated on: August 30, 2026 / 4:54 PM EDT
/ CBS News
NASA's $4.3 billion Roman Space Telescope was launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Sunday, kicking off a three-month voyage to a point in space a million miles from Earth where it will map the large-scale structure of the cosmos with a wide-field 300-megapixel camera.
Using a Hubble-class mirror originally built for a spy satellite, Roman will search for clues about the nature of repulsive dark energy, which is accelerating the expansion of the universe, along with probing the distribution of equally mysterious dark matter, which holds galaxies together and accounts for most of its mass.
A second instrument, an experimental coronagraph with shape-shifting mirrors that can dim the glare of distant suns, will allow astronomers to analyze the light reflected from vastly dimmer Jupiter-size planets to tease out details about their chemical makeup.
At the same time, Roman's wide-field camera will look for stars that periodically dim as planets pass in front as viewed from the telescope. Some 6,200 exoplanets have been discovered to date. By the end of Roman's mission, that number is expected to climb well above 100,000.
Along with a treasure trove of exoplanets, Roman is expected to catalog some 20 billion stars, 2 billion or more individual galaxies, tens of thousands of supernova blasts and countless transient events like flares generated by stars torn apart by close encounters with black holes.
"Roman is going to revolutionize the way we look at our universe," NASA science chief Nicky Fox said after launch. "It is going to measure dark matter, which is like the fabric of the universe; it's the thing you can't see, but we know it's there.
"It's going to measure dark energy, which kind of powers the universe. [There is] sort of a cosmic struggle between dark matter that wants to pull things together and dark energy that wants to push things apart. And [Roman] will allow us to finally kind of explain our universe and understand our place in it."
In addition, she said, the telescope will find "tens of thousands of exoplanets, planets that we don't even know are there, billions of galaxies, tens of billions of stars. It's just a spectacular mission."
President Trump, whose administration attempted to reduce funding for Roman in earlier rounds of proposed budget cuts, called NASA chief Jared Isaacman during a post-launch news conference at the Florida spaceport, prompting the administrator to hold his phone up to a microphone so the president could address the room.
"I just want to thank everybody and congratulate you," Mr. Trump said. "Boy, it looked beautiful on television. I just called Jared to find out, is there anything negative that I should know about? … He said, 'No, it's looking great. It couldn't be better, and it was another great success.' So, Jared's doing a fantastic job, you are doing a fantastic job and I'm supplying you all that money."
"Well, Mr. President, you've got a lot of smiling people in the room right now that are very happy to hear those words," Isaacman replied. "We will put it to excellent use."
The long-awaited flight got underway at 7:26 a.m. EDT when the Falcon Heavy's three core stages, each powered by nine kerosene-burning Merlin engines, roared to life, throttled up to more than five million pounds of thrust and majestically climbed away from historic Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.
It was only the 13th flight of a Falcon Heavy, the most powerful operational rocket in the SpaceX inventory, and it provided a spectacular weekend sky show for area residents, tourists and space center workers as it rapidly raced away on an easterly trajectory over the Atlantic Ocean.
The rocket's two strap-on side boosters, one making its first flight and the other its third, shut down and peeled away 2 1/2 minutes after liftoff. Both boosters then flipped around, reversed course and flew back to on-target landings at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
