Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

RST

Mission Profile

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST, formerly WFIRST) is NASA's next flagship space telescope, planned for launch aboard a Falcon Heavy to the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point in 2027, featuring a 2.4-meter primary mirror and an extremely wide field of view 100 times larger than Hubble's. Its primary mission is to conduct the most comprehensive survey of dark energy and dark matter yet attempted, measuring billions of galaxy shapes via weak gravitational lensing and baryon acoustic oscillations across the universe. Roman will also conduct a wide-field infrared survey that is expected to discover thousands of exoplanets using microlensing, complementing the pointed observations of the James Webb Space Telescope. Named for Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first Chief of Astronomy, the telescope represents a major new chapter in cosmological survey astronomy.