SpaceX successfully launched NASA’s roughly $4 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aboard Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center at 7:26 a.m. EDT on Aug. 30. The observatory is traveling toward the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, about 930,000 miles to one million miles from Earth, where it will spend about three months deploying systems, calibrating instruments and completing commissioning before science operations begin. BAE Systems designed and developed the Opto-Mechanical Assembly for Roman’s Wide Field Instrument, the mission’s primary scientific instrument, and provided integration and testing services. The assembly includes the optical bench, thermal-control system, precision mechanisms, optics and electronics. Roman’s field of view will be at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s, allowing scientists to survey the sky up to 1,000 times faster while studying planets, stars and galaxies. NASA plans for the telescope to map billions of galaxies, investigate dark matter and dark energy, and identify roughly 100,000 new exoplanets. The mission has a five-year primary duration and engineering capacity for up to a decade, with data planned for public release. BAE said Roman extends its support for NASA astrophysics flagships from Hubble and James Webb and is also contributing to the early-stage Habitable Worlds Observatory concept through research into picometer-capable mirror actuation systems.