The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is flying 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometres) from Earth to sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, where the James Webb Space Telescope and Europe's Euclid probe already sit. A 30-day cruise is set before the instruments wake; Julie McEnery describes a roughly 100-day cruise overlapping a three-month checkout. NASA plans first public images for January 2027 after the Wide Field and Coronagraph instruments take test images.
The observatory is flying to sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometres) from Earth, a neighbourhood already occupied by the James Webb Space Telescope and Europe's Euclid probe, on a trip of about 30 days. Senior project scientist Julie McEnery says the roughly 100-day cruise overlapping a three-month checkout is already under way; that path is about 1 million miles.[1], [2]
In the first hours after separation, the spacecraft turned so its solar panels faced the Sun, ground teams switched on power and communications, and the telescope fired its engines to refine the path. Checkout still requires controllers to unfold side panels and a sunshield, deploy a large antenna, open a protective cover, and power on the Wide Field Instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument for test images. The Wide Field Instrument is a 300 megapixel infrared camera meant to look far back in time; the Coronagraph Instrument is a technology demonstration that NASA says will see planets almost a billion times fainter than their host stars.[1], [2]
Integration and test scientist Jeremy Perkins says the early window is for shaking out techniques and early calibrations before a torrent of data that is to build toward 1.4 terabytes of science data a day. NASA plans to release the first public images in January 2027. The Planetary Society says Roman should be ready for science work in early 2027, with a science life slated at five years. NASA says the thermal stability of an observatory at L2 will provide a tenfold improvement beyond Hubble in much of the data Roman will gather.[1], [2]
