NASA has decided to partner with Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, more commonly known as SpaceX, to provide launch service for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope that will utilize the latter's Falcon Heavy rocket.
The space agency has awarded a NASA Launch Services (NLS) II contract to SpaceX to conduct the top-priority large space mission recommended by the 2010 Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey.
NASA and SpaceX
The NLS II is an indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract and comes with a total cost of $255 million for NASA's launch of the Roman Space telescope. This includes the launch service and other mission-related costs of the mission.
The telescope's mission currently is targeted to launch in October 2026, as specified in the contract, on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The telescope's science program will include dedicated investigations to tackle outstanding cosmology questions, including the effects of dark energy and dark matter and exoplanet exploration, as per NASA.
The Roman Space telescope also includes a substantial general investigator program to enable further studies of astrophysical phenomena to advance other science goals. It was previously known as the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST), but it was later renamed in honor of Dr. Nancy Grace Roman for her extraordinary work at the space agency, which paved the way for large space telescopes.
NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy is responsible for the launch vehicle program management of the SpaceX launch service. The Roman Space Telescope mission is also managed by the space agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
According to Space News, the Roman Space telescope is the next large, or flagship, astrophysics mission after the James Webb Space Telescope. The spacecraft comes equipped with a 2.4-meter primary mirror, which was donated to NASA a decade ago by the National Reconnaissance Office, with a wide field instrument and a coronagraph.
Space Exploration
The spacecraft has a mass of roughly 4,200 kilograms and will operate from the Earth-sun L-2 Lagrange point, which is a region of space about 1.5 million kilometers from our planet in the direction away from the sun. It is the same area where the James Webb Space Telescope and several other astrophysics missions operate.
The cost of the launch contract is much higher than previous NASA awards for Falcon Heavy missions. A year ago, the space agency awarded SpaceX a contract for a Falcon Heavy launch of the Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter in 2024 that was valued at $178 million.
Another contract for the Falcon Heavy launch of the GOES-U weather satellite, which was made in September 2021, is scheduled for 2024 and is worth $152.5 million. SpaceX offers the Falcon Heavy at a commercial list price of $97 million, which is an increase from earlier this year when it was only $90 million due to "excessive levels of inflation."
Roman, who the space telescope was named after, died in 2018 after overseeing the design and production of the Hubble Space Telescope, which was the first telescope to launch into space to observe the universe, The Hill reported.
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