Falcon Heavy wins Roman launch
- SpaceX's Falcon Heavy was awarded the launch contract for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Telescope. - The mission is scheduled for September 2026 and will map dark energy and study exoplanets. - Social coverage highlighted the contract as a major NASA win for launch capacity and science scheduling (x.com).
NASA picked SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, putting one of the agency’s biggest astrophysics missions on a commercial heavy-lift rocket. (nasa.gov) NASA said the launch services contract is worth about $255 million and covers the rocket plus other mission-related costs. The telescope will fly from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (nasa.gov) The contract NASA announced in 2022 listed October 2026 as the target month, but the agency said on April 22, 2026 that Roman is now on track for delivery to Kennedy in June and launch as soon as early September 2026. NASA’s event page now lists the mission as no earlier than September 2026. (nasa.gov 1) (nasa.gov 2) Roman is built to study dark energy, the name scientists use for the unknown effect driving the universe’s expansion to speed up, and to survey exoplanets, planets orbiting other stars. NASA says the observatory will use a Wide Field Instrument to scan large patches of sky and a Coronagraph Instrument to test ways of directly imaging faint planets next to bright stars. (nasa.gov) That launch timing has shifted in Roman’s favor over the last year. NASA said in December 2025 that the mission was formally slated to launch by May 2027, while the team was aiming for fall 2026; by April 2026, the agency had narrowed that to early September. (nasa.gov 1) (nasa.gov 2) The rocket choice reflects the payload and destination. NASA says Falcon Heavy’s 27 Merlin engines produce more than 5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, and Roman is headed to a point about a million miles from Earth, where space telescopes can stay cold and keep the Sun, Earth, and Moon on the same side. (spacex.com) (nasa.gov) Roman is now through construction and final environmental testing. NASA’s visualization team said this month that the observatory is scheduled for September 2026, nearly eight months ahead of its required launch readiness date of May 2027. (nasa.gov 1) (nasa.gov 2) NASA’s Launch Services Program manages these procurements to match missions with available commercial rockets under agency contracts. Roman’s path now is straightforward: ship to Florida in June, process at Kennedy, and hand Falcon Heavy a telescope NASA wants in the sky by early September. (nasa.gov) (nasa.gov)
