On Sunday, June 21, NASA’s Pegasus barge arrived at the Launch Complex 39 turn basin at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Our next major space telescope has arrived at the launch site! On Sunday, June 21, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope completed its voyage from our Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland down to our Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Now, the observatory will undergo final preparations before liftoff on Sunday, Aug. 30.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was carefully packed into a protective container for its eight-day voyage to the launch site.
Engineers loaded Roman into a protective container and drove it to the Port of Baltimore. Over the course of the next eight days, the observatory traveled over 800 nautical miles down the Atlantic coast on NASA’s Pegasus barge to its new temporary home in Florida. Roman also brought a buddy along for the ride: a weather cover for the Artemis III SLS (Space Launch System) core stage.
A variety of specialists attended the Roman observatory’s journey from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., to the port it shipped from at Baltimore. That includes tree trimmers who periodically cleared the path for the large transportation vehicle to pass through.
Upon arrival, technicians moved Roman into a massive airlock within Kennedy’s Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. This facility has an air filtration system that removes the contaminants that entered the building when the massive door opened. This step protects the spacecraft when it comes out of its transportation container.
Fittingly, our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope traveled to the launch site in a special transport vehicle called the CHARIOT (Conditioned Housing for Air, Road, Imaging optics assembly, and Observatory Transport) on a barge known as the Pegasus.
Next up is a grand unboxing! Technicians will use powerful cranes to move Roman to its work platform, called the Pantheon. The team will test Roman’s solar panels and inspect its insulation and thermal blankets to ensure the observatory is fully protected and flight ready. Then they’ll load about 290 gallons (roughly 1,100 liters) of hydrazine fuel into the tanks.
Once in space, Roman will deliver mind-boggling observations at a rapid rate. The mission will pair a large field of view with crisp infrared vision to scan vast, deep swaths of sky. That will help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy, exoplanets, and much more. Since each of Roman’s surveys will sample such a large volume of the cosmos, very little will be beyond Roman’s reach.
Follow along with Roman’s road to launch at science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman.
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Send your name to fly on Roman and download a boarding pass like this one with your name on it!
What’s the farthest you’ve ever traveled from home? Want to beat your record by about a million miles? Submit to have your name added to a memory card that will be attached to a plaque on our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope traveling a million miles away!
Prior to Roman’s launch, an SD card loaded with submitted names will be attached to this plaque where the square outline is.
After launch on August 30, Roman will journey way out to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), the same orbit as our James Webb Space Telescope. At L2, the gravity of the Sun and Earth, together with an object’s motion around the Sun, let it stay lined up with Earth as they orbit. That will give Roman a relatively steady orbit without using much fuel. Like Webb, Roman will trace out a large orbit around the actual L2 point — much larger than the Moon’s orbit around Earth — and the two will easily be kept far apart.
Telescopes at L2 also have a constant, unobstructed view of a wide swath of the sky. Earth won't block much of Roman's view since it will be so distant! And at L2, heat from Earth, the Sun, and the Moon have less effect on infrared telescopes, which “see” heat.
The Roman Telescope model has its boarding pass! Do you have yours?
Send your name here. Submissions close July 16. Follow along with Roman’s road to launch at science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman!
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!
This is one slice of an incredible high resolution, enhanced color image of Pluto, recently released by NASA. You can see the full, larger version here.
After being assembled, our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has passed final tests, and is being prepared to move to our Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where teams will work to prepare it for a launch in early September 2026.
With a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble's, Roman can potentially measure light from a billion galaxies in its lifetime. It will also be able to block starlight to directly see exoplanets and planet-forming disks, complete a statistical census of planetary systems in our galaxy, and settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics.
The observatory is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer who made cosmic vistas readily accessible to all by paving the way for telescopes based in space.
Want to learn more about Roman? Check out our #Roman Space Telescope tag and visit our mission page.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!
People asking why Artemis II matters, lemme tell you
1. First woman to enter deep space, Christina Koch, went as a mission specialist to help test the preventative measures against the radiation that causes cancer in the ships, and primarily affects women. It affects men too but less so. Christina's literally so inspiring to me.
2. This mission and further Artemis missions are testing safety concerns to help push the boundary of what we've been able to explore up to this point. Safety is the primary purpose of the trip. This is the first step to exploring Mars and further planets! Including Europa (my beloved.)
3. Before this, only 24 humans have ever entered deep space. Of that 24, 5 are alive today and they're all in their 90s. We very much needed a newer trip to help confirm or change whatever information we had from years and years ago. Having 4 living testaments of space exploration is a very important part of keeping said exploration alive.
4. Even though it wasn't the primary purpose of the trip, we've gotten so many rare pictures! Including my favorite "Hello, World" taken by commander Reid Wiseman:
It's the second photo EVER to have a fulll illuminated Earth hemisphere, the first being "Blue Marble". All other photos of the Earth have been spliced. Blue Marble was taken during the day and Hello, World was taken at night (the exposure has been lifted for clarity). It's my new favorite photo, it's so beautiful.
I JUST NOTICED YOU CHANGED THE ASK TEXT THAT’S SO CUTE 😭😭
In that spirit, what was your favorite astronomical detail in PHM? (Book or movie)
thank u for noticing :D i do it all for her (pentapedal rock alien)
I loved everything about the book and the movie (except for the unbalanced centrifuge but that's an old joke), but especially the depiction of space travel!! very few sci-fi stories acknowledge how HUGE space is, either dismissing it with like "Well we can travel at / beyond the speed of light" or just not addressing it
PHM not only does the math correctly, but the literal years of travel time ends up being a major plot point!! If it didn't commit to that, we wouldn't have the rush for the Hail Mary mission that forces Grace on board, we wouldn't have the plot point of it being a suicide mission, you get it
I love you mathematics and logistics. math haters DO NOT interact
While we're looking up at the Artemis II astronauts journeying to the Moon, they're looking back home at us.
In this image, Earth peeks through the capsule window, reminding us that a view like this relies on the ingenuity and hard work of countless people back home.
In the second image, we see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere.
Follow the Artemis II astronauts on their journey to the Moon:
On April 6, 2026, the Artemis II astronauts flew around the Moon, observing the far side – which we never see on Earth thanks to tidal locking – with their own eyes and with cameras.
See more of the Moon:
A crescent Earth setting behind the Moon’s horizon.
Earth setting behind the Moon as seen by the Artemis II crew. Over half the left side of the image is filled by the gray lunar surface, pocked with craters.
A close view of the Moon. Jagged circles of craters dot the gray surface, fading to dark on the left side of the image.
A close view of the edge of the Moon. Jagged circles of craters dot the dark gray lunar surface, which arcs across the image.
A close-up view of the Moon, filling most of the frame. Along the left side of the image, the terminator divides the illuminated and darkened sides of the Moon.
A close-up view of the Moon, filling most of the frame. Along the left side of the image, the terminator divides the illuminated and darkened sides of the Moon.
Earth just as it set behind the Moon, as seen by the Artemis II crew. The dark gray surface of the Moon, pocked with craters, arcs from the bottom left corner of the image to the top right.
Check out more photos from the lunar flyby, including astronaut selfies and the solar eclipse only they experienced.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!
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