SpaceX deployed the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope shortly after its Falcon Heavy launch on Aug. 30, 2026.
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#telescope #SpaceX #SpaceExploration #falcon #foryouシ #fypシ゚ #millionviews #viral #followｍe
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00:00Let's see if we can see.
00:04Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope separation confirmed.
00:08Beautiful.
00:08There we go.
00:10Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope flying free on its way to Lagrange 2
00:16and to open a new eye on the universe.
00:19Of course, a lot of celebration with the team, Jared.
00:22I know you represent a lot of people in NASA's Launch Services Program
00:27and across NASA, a lot of work goes into this.
00:31I hope you have enjoyed it.
00:32We've enjoyed having you.
00:34Yeah, it's been great.
00:35Yeah, wonderful.
00:36Spacecraft deploy.
00:37Hear all the claps here behind us in the Mission Control Room.
00:41I'm sure the same at Goddard.
00:43Thanks so much for having me today.
00:44And most importantly, congratulations to the whole Roman team
00:48on behalf of the Launch Services Program.
00:49It's been great working with everybody,
00:51and we really can't wait to see all the great science
00:54that you're going to do out there.
00:55It's going to be terrific.
00:56Roman is on its way, and we are going back to Zach
00:59at Hawthorne, California, and SpaceX.
01:05Thanks, Steve and Jared, and what a spectacular deployment.
01:09Of course, a huge thank you from SpaceX to everyone at NASA
01:12for the partnership on this mission
01:14and to all the teams on both sides
01:16who brought NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to the pad
01:19and into space.
01:20Now, with the launch completed and successful deployment
01:23from our second stage, that's going to do it for me here in Hawthorne.
01:26So I'll hand it back to the NASA team from here.
01:28Over to you, Megan.
01:30Hey, thank you to our launch commentators and, yes, to SpaceX
01:33as well as NASA's Launch Services Program for getting Roman
01:36onto a trajectory towards Lagrange Point 2 or L2.
01:39And now the spacecraft teams will take over, so let's hear from Leah with her last guest.
01:45Hi, Megan.
01:46I'm actually joined here by Jeremy Perkins, who's part of our science commissioning team.
01:49And I have to tell you something funny that just happened.
01:52He walked in right after launch, and he was showing me on his watch this really interesting pattern
01:57of a regular heart rate, then right at 726, this huge spike.
02:01So super exciting day for you.
02:03Oh, extremely exciting.
02:03Super exciting day for your team.
02:05We launched just about half an hour ago.
02:07I hope your heart rate's starting to settle down just a little bit.
02:10So things here are starting to simmer, but it's actually just now picking up for the mission team.
02:15What are you guys doing now?
02:17What's next on the board?
02:18Yeah, so coming up in the next few hours, I think I just saw the video of us deploying from
02:24the rocket,
02:24but we contact, and then we get our solar panels pointed at the sun so we can make sure we
02:30get good power
02:31going to the system because we're on internal power right now.
02:33And then over the next day or so, we're going to do a mid-course correction
02:37where we make sure we're in the right way to get to L2, about a million miles from Earth.
02:44And then over the next days, we're going to be deploying our high-gain antenna,
02:48which is about as, I mean, if you were watching the video just now,
02:51you saw it as we were going away from the space vehicle.
02:54It's about as round as I am tall.
02:55Oh, wow.
02:56And that's just to get down the amount of data that AMI and other folks talked about earlier
03:00back down to the ground.
03:01And how much data are we talking about?
03:04So we're talking about a terabyte of data a day from L2.
03:07So the way that I like to think about that, it's like a million songs that we're streaming
03:11from a million miles away every single day for the lifetime of Roman.
03:15Oh, my goodness.
03:16Now, the team of engineers who are responsible for designing and building the spacecraft
03:20are actually watching this unfold right now.
03:22What are they looking for?
03:23So, like you said, the folks that design, built, and integrated Roman are actually sitting
03:29on console right now and just paying attention to every little detail about Roman.
03:33I mean, there's thermal engineers that are looking at all the temperatures.
03:35There's folks in making sure the deployments are going okay.
03:38There's folks that are making sure the communications are working.
03:40And so there's just a whole crew of folks here on campus at Kennedy and up in Greenbelt
03:45and all over the country that are actually monitoring Roman as it goes to L2.
03:48And this is kind of their first look because some of this instrumentation actually hasn't
03:52even been used or tested since it was first in testing before it was ever even integrated
03:57or put into fairings or put on a rocket.
03:59Correct.
04:00The last time we've really turned the instruments all the way on was back when we did thermal
04:04vac months ago.
04:04Oh, my goodness.
04:05And so we're going to be going through a period of what's called scientific commissioning,
04:10which is kind of that official handover from the engineering team is doing the checkouts
04:13to the science team.
04:15Yep.
04:15Tell us a little bit about timeline and what does that look like?
04:17Yeah.
04:17So we're going to be checking out Roman for about a month, and then we're going to be aligning
04:21and focusing the telescope, making sure we get all the pointing right, and then we get
04:24into science commissioning, like you said.
04:25And that's where we're really just checking out the instruments, pointing them at the sky,
04:30getting our first star light on the detectors for the first time, and doing that handover
04:33from engineering to science, which is when the science team really starts to get involved
04:37in really understanding how the instrument works.
04:40And then we get those images and we're going to be sharing those with the world.
04:43So, Jeremy, thank you so much for being here.
04:45Congratulations to your team.
04:55I think we also had something that Jeremy was wearing to track their heart rate.
04:58There would also be a spike around that time, again, 36 minutes ago when there was a launch
05:03of Roman right from here at Kennedy Space Center.
05:06So, Dominic, I want to take time to take more questions.
05:09We had so many of you send in great questions throughout the broadcast, so we have time for a
05:13few more.
05:14Let's take the first one.
05:15Absolutely.
05:16What do we have?
05:17How would repairs or refueling Roman work, given the distance of the telescope from Earth?
05:23That's a great question.
05:24We did design Roman to be at least refuelable so that its fuel ports are accessible.
05:30A sufficiently advanced robotic refueling spacecraft could get out there to a million miles away.
05:38Could rendezvous and dock with Roman, grapple with it, and add more fuel?
05:43That could extend its lifetime to give it even more time to map the cosmos.
05:47But is that the plan to refuel it?
05:49Hopefully not.
05:50We don't have a plan to do that, but we designed it in so that it could be possible.
05:53We didn't want to preclude the possibility of extending a lifetime, but it relies on servicing
05:57capabilities that are still in development.
05:59Yeah.
05:59I said hopefully not because it's perfect.
06:01You made a perfect picture.
06:02It is perfect.
06:03But we want even more of the perfect.
06:06All right.
06:07Let's take another question now.
06:08Let's see.
06:10What, oh my God, what light spectra does Roman operate with?
06:14Good.
06:15So sorry guys.
06:15Terrible vision I have.
06:17That's fine.
06:17So the Hubble Space Telescope was designed primarily for ultraviolet and visible light.
06:22Uh-huh.
06:22It extends a little bit into the infrared.
06:24The James Webb Space Telescope is designed to focus on the infrared and out into longer wavelengths.
06:30Roman bridges that gap.
06:31It is sensitive to light in the near and the visible range.
06:35It's an orange light, but it goes further out into the infrared than Hubble can.
06:38And with that infrared vision, it penetrates through clouds of gas and dust and sees farther
06:43into our galaxy or into star forming regions than has been possible with visible light.
06:48Wow.
06:48Okay.
06:49Well, and again, remember we did ask some folks to vote on Twitch about what they'd be most excited
06:56to study, Roman would be most excited to study.
06:58So let's pull up you guys' answers now.
07:00Again, it was dark energy, dark matter, planetary systems.
07:03Oh, that is not surprising there.
07:05Dark energy and dark matter, Dominic.
07:08Yes.
07:08That is what we built the mission to do, among other things, and it's part of the key questions
07:13about the universe, the fabric of space and time that Roman will unlock for us.
07:18Yeah.
07:18Again, there's just so much we don't know about it, so of course there must be so much curiosity around
07:22it.
07:22There is so much out there to discover.
07:24We do not understand a lot about the universe, and Roman was designed to give us the data
07:29we need to answer countless questions.
07:31Got it.
07:32And then another quick note, don't forget about Roman's Adopt a Pixel campaign.
07:36We debuted it earlier in this broadcast.
07:39A single Roman image will have 300 million pixels, and we are inviting you to sign up for
07:45one of those pixels by visiting nasa.gov slash adoptapixel.
07:49Again, how cool is that?
07:50Your own cosmic dot in the universe.
07:52I hope you're going to sign up.
07:53Oh, absolutely, Megan.
07:54I don't know what my pixel will contain.
07:56Will it be a star?
07:57Will it be a galaxy?
07:58Will that star explode?
08:00Who knows?
08:01Will the star explode?
08:02Yeah, that would be great.
08:03I would love anything.
08:04I mean, I just think it's so great to be able to call some part of these beautiful images
08:09that we're going to see my own.
08:11So that's a really fun campaign.
08:12Thank you to those who developed it.
08:14All right.
08:15So that's going to do it for us here at Kennedy Space Center of this live coverage of NASA's
08:19Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission.
08:21A huge congratulations to everyone involved and a big thank you to everyone who participated
08:26in our broadcast.
08:27Of course, especially to you, Dominic.
08:29Dominic, it was so great having you.
08:31It was thrilling to be here with you, Megan.
08:33I couldn't have had a better partner to go through this launch with.
08:36It has been an amazing day.
08:38Roman had a beautiful, picture-perfect launch.
08:40It's going out on its way to space where it's going to do fabulous, fantastic things.
08:45And we just want to give a shout-out again to the teams over at Goddard.
08:49We had our launch support room over there, specifically supporting launch operations.
08:53And then we also had the mission operations room.
08:57Oh, they're waving now.
08:58Congratulations to you all.
08:59Yes, we can see the launch support room on the right and the mission operations room on the left.
09:03Those people are hard at work preparing the observatory.
09:06In fact, it's already operating.
09:08And over the next several months, we will have a hotbed of activity,
09:12especially in the mission operations room that you see there.
09:14I'll be sitting in there some of the time as we get the first data back
09:17and tune up this observatory to do spectacular, world-changing things.
09:22And I just got word that the spacecraft is power positive.
09:25Can you tell us about that?
09:26Ah, yes.
09:27So that means that the solar arrays are actively providing electricity.
09:30It's no longer running off of its internal batteries.
09:32In fact, hopefully it will be recharging them at this point.
09:35That's necessary because we need all of that electrical power to keep the observatory running smoothly.
09:39Oh, my gosh.
09:40That's so exciting.
09:40Oh, again, I'm getting goosebumps.
09:42It's so cool to see what we can accomplish together and what NASA continues to do to advance what we
09:47do in air and space.
09:48So we invite you now to our post-launch news conference.
09:51That will take place at 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time on NASA's YouTube and X accounts.
09:56We will have NASA leadership and Roman scientists on to answer any of your questions.
10:00And remember, launch might be over, but the mission has just begun, as we've been just telling you about.
10:05Yes.
10:05We have a team of people at Goddard continuing to follow along with the mission, and you can continue to
10:11follow along with us on this groundbreaking journey by going to NASA.gov slash Roman.
10:16You're definitely going to want to check out our live broadcast when we will reveal Roman's first images.
10:20We're aiming for early 2027, Dominic.
10:23Those first images will be iconic in the same way first images from Hubble and Webb have permeated the nation
10:30and the world's consciousness.
10:32Roman is going to do that on an unprecedented scale.
10:35Yeah. Let's discover new things we don't yet know about our universe.
10:38Until then, have a great day and go, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.