Applications for the Roman NASA Social Are Now Open!
In this photo, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is blasting off to space on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana. On Aug. 30, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will launch from our Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
Calling all digital creators! Ever wanted to see a rocket launch up close? Here’s your chance! Social storytellers are invited to apply to attend the NASA social for the launch of our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This flagship mission will explore the universe's dark side, discover troves of strange new worlds, and much more.
Participants will:
Tour NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida
Learn directly from astrophysics subject matter experts
Meet fellow digital creators and social media users
Spend time with members of NASA’s social media team
View the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
Interested? The clock’s ticking! Applications close June 28 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Learn more about how to apply.
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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!
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Moon Joy June artists! Looking for a little inspiration?
The prompt for this week is “Launch.” Here is a small collection of photos of the launch of the Artemis II mission, which took place on April 1, 2026. What followed was ten days of our Artemis astronauts circling the Moon, returning to Earth, and experiencing pure Moon joy all throughout.
You can find more launch photos here.
If you’re feeling inspired to make some art, you can share your creations on Tumblr with the #ArtemisArtShow hashtag!
This illustration shows the relative scale of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and a Tyrannosaurus rex. Roman is over 42 feet (12.7 meters) long — about the length of a T. rex — and over 14 feet (4.4 meters) wide when fully deployed. Roman also weighs around 18,000 pounds, or 8,000 kilograms (dry mass), which is the approximate mass of a T. rex as well.
Did you know NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is both roughly as long and as massive as a Tyrannosaurus rex? This observatory, which will move to the launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida very soon, is over 42 feet (12.7 meters) long and weighs around 18,000 pounds (8,000 kilograms), not including the fuel. Let’s explore some of the components that bring Roman to T. rex proportions.
Artist's concepts of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (left) and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (right), highlighting the 7.9-foot (2.4-meter) primary mirrors that sit in the heart of each observatory.
At the observatory’s heart sits a mirror that’s 7.9 feet (2.4 meters) across and 410 pounds (186 kilograms), or about the length and weight of a protoceratops! Roman’s primary mirror is the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope’s main mirror, but less than one-fourth the weight thanks to major improvements in technology.
Technicians installed Roman’s primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument (pictured at left), in the fall of 2025.
The mission’s 300-megapixel infrared camera, called the Wide Field Instrument, is over 8 feet (about 2.5 meters) tall, which is about the length of a triceratops skull. It will give Roman the same angular resolution as Hubble while capturing an area of sky at least 100 times larger. The mission will gather data up to 1,000 times faster than Hubble.
Its sweeping cosmic surveys will help scientists discover new information about planets beyond our solar system, untangle mysteries like dark energy, and map how both normal matter and dark matter are structured and distributed throughout the universe. Casting such a wide, deep “net” into space will give astronomers plenty of cosmic bycatch as well; Roman’s crisp, panoramic views will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to do all kinds of exciting science.
The Coronagraph Instrument was installed on Roman’s instrument carrier in October 2024.
Roman’s Coronagraph Instrument is about as wide (5.5 feet, or 1.7 meters) as a velociraptor is long. The Coronagraph is designed to demonstrate new technologies for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from a star and make it possible for scientists to see the faint reflected light from planets in orbit around them.
The Coronagraph aims to photograph worlds and dusty disks around nearby stars in visible light to help us see giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far.
This photo shows Roman’s 18 detectors, which are the heart of the mission’s 300-megapixel camera.
Roman’s “eyes,” 18 saltine cracker-sized detectors in its primary instrument, are each about as tall as an allosaurus tooth. They each have about 16.8 million tiny pixels for a total of 300 million, which means Roman’s images will be super hi-res. Each detector is made of millions of mercury-cadmium-telluride photodiodes (sensors that convert light into an electrical current), one for each pixel.
Principal technician Billy Keim installs a cover plate over Roman’s detectors.
The detectors are secured to a silicon electronics board that will help process the light signals using indium, a soft metal that has roughly the same consistency as chewing gum. Together, these ultra-sensitive detectors can capture vast areas of sky in a single shot while still revealing incredibly fine detail, allowing Roman to map the cosmos faster and more precisely than ever before.
Roman’s electrical wiring was installed on the spacecraft flight structure in the summer of 2023.
There are 1,000 pounds, or 450 kilograms, (the weight of a pachycephalosaurus) of electrical cabling, made up of about 32,000 wires and 900 connectors, laced throughout the observatory. If the wires were laid out end-to-end they would span 45 miles — nearly enough to trace the entire perimeter fence in the imagined Jurassic Park! Functioning as the Roman’s “nervous system,” the cabling enables different parts of the observatory to communicate with one another, provides power, and helps the central computer monitor the observatory’s function.
The Roman observatory was fully integrated on Nov. 25, 2025, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Roman’s six solar panels each measure about 7 by 10 feet (2 by 3 meters), collectively giving Roman a “wingspan” similar to a pteranodon’s! Together, they will provide a total of 4 kilowatts of power, which is about the same rate that a modest rooftop solar panel system produces during the daytime.
Over the course of two days in June 2025, eight technicians installed Roman’s solar panels onto the outer portion of the observatory.
The panels are covered in a total of 3,902 solar cells that will convert sunlight directly into electricity much like plants convert sunlight to chemical energy. When tiny bits of light, called photons, strike the cells, some of their energy transfers to electrons within the material. This jolt excites the electrons, which start moving more or jump to higher energy levels. In a solar cell, excited electrons create electricity by breaking free and moving through a circuit, sort of like water flowing through a pipe. The panels are designed to channel that energy to power the observatory.
Roman’s high-gain antenna will provide the primary communication link between the spacecraft and the ground.
The radio dish that will send data across a million miles of intervening space back to Earth spans 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) in diameter. That’s about the size of the largest known dinosaur footprints, yet it weighs only 24 pounds (10.9 kilograms). Its large size will help Roman send radio signals across a million miles of intervening space to Earth. The dual-band antenna will use one frequency band to receive commands and send back information about the spacecraft’s health and location. It will use another frequency band to transmit a deluge of data at up to 500 megabits per second.
We’re only a few months out from launch, and so close to a completely new understanding of the universe and our place within it. Follow along with Roman’s road to launch at nasa.gov/roman, and virtually tour the Roman observatory here.
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Are you in need of some serious Moon joy? Get ready for Moon Joy June.
NASA is hosting a month-long art challenge and we would love for you to participate! For every week of June, NASA will introduce a new prompt to inspire artists and creators of all kinds:
June 1-7: Launch
June 8-14: Moon
June 15-21: Crew
June 22-30: Earth
To share your Moon joy-inspired art on Tumblr, use the hashtag #ArtemisArtShow.
The sky is (not) the limit! We encourage all forms of art, including but not limited to: paintings, drawings, sculptures, dances, music, animations, nail art, latte foam art, poetry, fashion. Choose your favorite medium and share it with us!
Learn more about the challenge in our FAQ. Happy Moon Joy June to all who celebrate!
Who are the bravest people to go to space in history? Of course you might say Armstrong or other pioneers. But I want to put forward a couple of names you might not think of: Sergei Zalyotin and Aleksandr Kaleri. Who are they? They're the first people to trust a private company to pay to bring them back!
The Russian space program was in rough shape in the 90s. The Soviet Union had collapsed, and funding for space exploration went with it. After that, everything was run on an absolute shoestring, including the money for supplying and maintaining their space station Mir.
Mir was the first-ever modular space station, and something of a trial project for the International Space Station (though of course the ISS wouldn't come about until Mir was already being retired). Despite the budgetary issues, it still set new records. In its time, it was the heaviest space station ever, the longest occupied (12.5 years straight). And it's still where the longest single human spaceflight was, at 437 days.
So where can the money come from? You could get other countries to pay for it. And they did: Many of Mir's occupants were from other nations, paying for their stay. And the Shuttle-Mir program saw seven astronauts stop on the station, bringing with them much-needed resupplies.
And, last but not least, advertising, of course. Many times, private companies paid for their products to be sent up to Mir for the astronauts to do product placement in their TV broadcasts. In one particularly galling event, the cosmonaut was ordered by the commercial's director to redo the shoot, because he wasn't smiling enough. Look closely enough, and you'll even see ad banners hung up in the Russian mission control center.
The end of Mir was inevitable, and it came right at the turn of the millennium. Its orbit was too far for integration with the new ISS. Usually you'd deorbit the station safely, but why not squeeze the tiniest bit of extra cash out of it?
Thus MirCorp was born. The company's plan was to maintain the station itself, and refurbish it into the world's first orbital movie studio! Plans got further than I'd expect: A movie star, Vladimir Steklov, was even trained and assigned for a flight to start filming.
Before that, the station had to be prepared, so MirCorp hired on Zalyotin and Kaleri, the latter of whom already had done two missions to Mir. Their job would be to reactivate the station months after it was abandoned by the previous crew in 1999.
They spent over two months working on the station, inspecting the interior and exterior for damage.
Soyuz TM-30 was the first privately-funded space flight, but it was the end of the story for Mir. MirCorp went out of business shortly thereafter, and no more flights could be made. The station was intentionally deorbited and burned in the atmosphere in 2001.
Who are the bravest people to go to space in history? Of course you might say Armstrong or other pioneers. But I want to put forward a couple of names you might not think of: Sergei Zalyotin and Aleksandr Kaleri. Who are they? They're the first people to trust a private company to pay to bring them back!
The Russian space program was in rough shape in the 90s. The Soviet Union had collapsed, and funding for space exploration went with it. After that, everything was run on an absolute shoestring, including the money for supplying and maintaining their space station Mir.
Mir was the first-ever modular space station, and something of a trial project for the International Space Station (though of course the ISS wouldn't come about until Mir was already being retired). Despite the budgetary issues, it still set new records. In its time, it was the heaviest space station ever, the longest occupied (12.5 years straight). And it's still where the longest single human spaceflight was, at 437 days.
So where can the money come from? You could get other countries to pay for it. And they did: Many of Mir's occupants were from other nations, paying for their stay. And the Shuttle-Mir program saw seven astronauts stop on the station, bringing with them much-needed resupplies.
And, last but not least, advertising, of course. Many times, private companies paid for their products to be sent up to Mir for the astronauts to do product placement in their TV broadcasts. In one particularly galling event, the cosmonaut was ordered by the commercial's director to redo the shoot, because he wasn't smiling enough. Look closely enough, and you'll even see ad banners hung up in the Russian mission control center.
The end of Mir was inevitable, and it came right at the turn of the millennium. Its orbit was too far for integration with the new ISS. Usually you'd deorbit the station safely, but why not squeeze the tiniest bit of extra cash out of it?
Thus MirCorp was born. The company's plan was to maintain the station itself, and refurbish it into the world's first orbital movie studio! Plans got further than I'd expect: A movie star, Vladimir Steklov, was even trained and assigned for a flight to start filming.
Before that, the station had to be prepared, so MirCorp hired on Zalyotin and Kaleri, the latter of whom already had done two missions to Mir. Their job would be to reactivate the station months after it was abandoned by the previous crew in 1999.
They spent over two months working on the station, inspecting the interior and exterior for damage.
Soyuz TM-30 was the first privately-funded space flight, but it was the end of the story for Mir. MirCorp went out of business shortly thereafter, and no more flights could be made. The station was intentionally deorbited and burned in the atmosphere in 2001.
The Pillars of Creation: Where Stars Are Born in a Cosmic CathedralThis breathtaking image showcases the Eagle Nebula and its most famous feature — the legendary Pillars of Creation.Located in the constellation Serpens, roughly 5,700 light-years from Earth, these towering columns of interstellar gas and dust rise like ancient spires in a stellar nursery. Each pillar is several light-years tall — so massive that our entire solar system could fit inside them with room to spare.Inside these dense, dusty towers, new stars are quietly igniting right now. But they’re also under attack. The intense ultraviolet radiation blasting from nearby hot, young stars is slowly eroding the pillars, sculpting them into dramatic shapes while triggering the next generation of star birth in a beautiful cycle of creation and destruction.The Pillars became world-famous after Hubble’s iconic 1995 photograph. James Webb later revealed them in even greater infrared glory, showing hidden stars forming deep within the dust.A cosmic masterpiece where the universe is quite literally building its future.
This image, released in celebration of Earth Day, shows the terminator – the line between night and day – on Earth. The Artemis II astronauts captured this view on April 2, 2026, during their journey to the Moon.
NASA science improves life on Earth every day. We provide insights on our home planet that can only be gathered from space, which can then be used for disaster response, farming, and more. In addition, our observations of Earth and the technologies we develop provide the foundation needed to explore and sustain human life on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Download this year's Earth Day poster.
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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.
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This view from the Artemis II Orion spacecraft reveals a heavily cratered portion of the far side of the Moon. They vary in size, and in some areas, there are even craters within craters. The lighting here enhances contrast across the terrain, highlighting differences in surface features and giving insight into the Moon’s geologic history.
For more imagery from the mission, visit our Artemis II Multimedia Page.
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Over approximately 10 days, our Artemis II crew successfully completed a voyage around the Moon. They gave us stunning photos of the far side of the Moon, Earth, and a solar eclipse, along with inspirational messages, laughs, and even a few tears. Let's recap the Artemis II mission.
First step: fit check.
Artemis II astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen got suited up and had their spacesuits checked to make sure they were ready to go to space.
Once their custom-fit suits were checked and the astronauts were ready, they walked out to greet the crowd at our Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After saying hi to everyone, including their families, the quartet made their way onto the Orion spacecraft that would carry them to the Moon.
The astronauts entered Orion and completed more checks. Next, the closeout crew closed the final hatch on Orion.
Then, it was time for the big moment – well, the first big moment of the mission: Liftoff!
Orion was on its way to the Moon, and the astronauts aboard had plenty to do.
They exercised…
and conducted interviews…
all while showing the camaraderie and collaboration that make missions possible.
And that means Rise, too! The little plush zero gravity indicator was a constant companion throughout the mission.
Finally, it was time for them to go around the Moon and observe its far side. As the astronauts began to describe features of the Moon that they saw, they had a heartfelt moment when suggesting that a crater be named after Reid's late wife, Carroll.
During the lunar flyby, the foursome experienced a solar eclipse that only they could see!
All throughout the mission, there were many moments of "Moon Joy."
After the crew completed their observation duties, it was time to start the journey back home.
On April 10, the Artemis II astronauts safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, bringing the mission to a triumphant end.
These GIFs are just a taste of the amazing imagery and memorable moments from Artemis II. Relive it all on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/NASA
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