Roman Space Telescope launch set for Sunday morning, with live webcast and science preview

NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on Aug. 30 at 7:26 a.m. EDT from Kennedy Space Center. Live coverage begins at 6:20 a.m. EDT, with prelaunch briefings scheduled for Aug. 29. The telescope will study dark energy, exoplanets, and other cosmic phenomena.

The Roman telescope carries ambitious science goals, including discovering thousands of exoplanets and probing dark matter and dark energy. Following liftoff, it will spend roughly 30 days traveling to the sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, a stable gravitational position about a million miles from Earth.

Saturday's schedule includes a mission science briefing with project scientists and a launch readiness press conference. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, a private astronaut, is expected to fly past the rocket on the pad in his jet, weather permitting.