NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Postlaunch News Conference - 4K

NASA and industry leaders participate in a postlaunch news conference for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope inside the NASA News Center’s John Holliman Auditorium at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026. Participants include NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman; Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington; Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Denton Gibson, launch director, NASA’s Launch Services Program, NASA Kennedy; Julianna Scheiman, director, NASA Science and Dragon Programs, SpaceX; and Justin McReynolds, launch weather officer, 45th Weather Squadron, U.S. Space Force. Roman will investigate dark energy and dark matter, conduct a statistical census of planetary systems, and enable a broad range of additional astrophysics research. Liftoff of Roman atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket occurred at 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday, Aug. 30, from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39A.

What is said in the film

987654321. Ignition and liftoff. Go! Falcon heavy and go! Roman space telescope.

Vehicle is pitching downrange. All and chamber pressures are. No. From NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. I'm George Alderman, deputy press secretary in the Office of Communications.

A little more than two hours ago, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Telescope successfully left Earth for its million mile journey to Lagrange point two, or L2. Launching aboard a Space Falcon Heavy rocket from launchpad 39, a, NASA's flagship mission will help astronomers explore dark matter, dark energy and worlds outside of our solar system. Here to talk about Roman's mission are NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate Jackie Townsend, Roman Telescope project manager Julie McHenry, Roman Telescope senior project scientist. And Denton Gibson, launch director of NASA's Launch Services Program. Each of our participants will have an opportunity to provide opening remarks and will begin with the administrator, Isaacman.

Thanks, George. It is. It is an absolute pleasure to share another extraordinary launch with all of you, and it's great to see everybody here again. So in case you missed it here at 7:26 a. m.

Eastern Standard Time, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully lifted off from pad 39, a Kennedy Space Center. Falcon heavy is 27. Merlin engines generated more than 5 million pounds of thrust. To send our newest flagship telescope off on its great mission of science and discovery. Telescope has separated from Falcon Heavy at solar panels and lower instruments.

Sunshade have been deployed. Ground controllers at NASA Goddard have been receiving telemetry data from Roman, and apparently all systems are nominal. So our Maryland center will continue collecting data from the telescope for the duration of its mission. In the coming days, the coronagraph instrument will power on and ground controllers will initiate the first of two mid-course corrections, and additional deployments will take place, including Romans high gain antenna. Over the course of the next several months, Roman will travel nearly 1 million miles away from Earth to Lagrange point L2 and begin transmitting imagery and data back home that will contribute to world changing science, along with all of the captivating imagery that, like we see from Hubble and James Webb, I have no doubt that Roman will become a household name alongside those great instruments of discovery.

Now, Roman has a field of view at least 100 times that of Hubble in over a thousand times the scan rate. So the telescope will provide a vast new atlas of the universe, potentially revealing more than 100,000 new exoplanets through its various surveys. So Roman will help us, as you've already heard, study dark matter and dark energy mysteries that may change our fundamental understanding of the universe. And it's doing all this and more ahead of schedule and on budget, which is pretty extraordinary thing to say as an administrator. But the start of many more, I have no doubt.

And this is a massive accomplishment and proof of what a truly focused NASA science team is capable of accomplishing. This effort was led initially by Jamie Dunn, whose outstanding work and stellar reputation have again earned him more than just this acknowledgment, and as well as his promotion to the director of Goddard Space Flight Center. So I'd like to once again congratulate Jamie and his entire team on this extraordinary achievement. The successful launch is the capstone of an exciting week for NASA, so if you weren't paying attention on Friday, President Trump honored the crew of Artemis two with the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, which is NASA's highest award for courage and valor in spaceflight. He also announced the creation of the NASA led United States Space Academy, which will train engineers, explorers, pioneers, astronauts and leaders of this exciting future we all imagine in space, and we are not slowing down.

We are continuing to accelerate America's grand return to the lunar surface. The Artemis three crew, actively training as their spacecraft, is being assembled just down the road from us in the Vehicle Assembly Building. We are building the moon base with another announcement expected, I believe next week we're preparing dragonfly for its mission to Saturn's moon of Titan. In 2028, we are rebuilding our explained portfolio. We have some announcements there in the future.

And finally getting America underway on nuclear power and space with SR1. Freedom and Roman. Is those principles put into practice an ambitious mission, well-managed, built by an extraordinary team and now on its way to unlock the mysteries of the universe. This is their achievement, and I hope everyone who had a hand in this incredible mission takes an enormous pride in what they already achieved and wished them minimal stress in the days ahead. Until that glorious moment when we receive Roman's first light.

So thank you. And now I'll turn things over to our Science Mission Directorate associate Doctor Nikki Fox. Thank you so much, Jared. It is just such a pleasure to be here. I am so much calmer than I was when I saw you all yesterday.

And thank you to the weather for cooperating. That gave us quite, quite a start. Everything was great except for the weather at 3:00 this morning, and so it is delightful to be able to to sit here having launched it. As Jared said, you know, Roman is such an incredible, incredible mission. And it joins, you know, more than 100 other missions in our portfolio, each of them doing vital work.

But the important thing is when we put them together into that NASA science fleet, we just ten acts, the amount of results that we can get, you know, Roman is going to change the way we look at the universe. It is going to discover, as Jared noted, tens of thousands, maybe even 100,000 new exo planets. And when you kind of think that in 1990, when we launched Hubble, we didn't even know there were exoplanets. And so how far we have come? We know there are 6000 now.

And then, you know, there'll be maybe 100,000 at the end of Romans mission. Why do we care so much about exoplanets? Because one of our main goals that NASA is answering the question, are we alone in the universe? Whether you like space, whether you like technology, whatever it is, people look up at the sky and they think, you know, I am I alone? Are we alone?

Is there another Earth 2. 0? Looking back at me and with Roman, we are going to make this giant leap forward with the coronagraph technology that is going to allow us to look at these distant, distant worlds and start to really resolve the the atmosphere around them to let us know could they be habitable? We also at NASA look for for signs of life or, you know, signs that life could have happened even in our own solar system, our wonderful rovers on Mars, taking those incredible images, taking samples and finding recently signs of of prebiotic chemistry. Europa Clipper heading out to the moon of Jupiter to try and fly through a plume to see.

Are there the building blocks? Could there could there at one time have been life under that icy surface. And then, as Gerard noted, the mighty dragonfly, you know, taking off from this planet, 2028 also on a Falcon Heavy. Actually, it's our next Falcon Heavy lunch that that will, you know, tell us all about what what life is or what things are like on Titan and could could life have been supported there? That helps us to think about what our planet was like before life started.

Why? Why was there a spark that created life here? What were the conditions like? It's impossible to really tell that by just doing research on earth, because we we are noisy, life is noisy, and we continue to imprint on our surroundings by going to these distant places we can actually look. It's like a time capsule.

It's frozen in time of what those conditions were like when our planet was still forming, all part of the wonderful, rich fabric of the universe, just like dark matter and with with with Nancy Grace Roman. We will, of course, be studying dark matter and dark energy and also explaining what our universe, how our universe works. Just one mission doing all of that. Billions of galaxies will be found, tens of billions of new stars, tens of thousands of new planets, and thousands of supernovae all wrapped up in one beautiful telescope. As Jared said, today belongs to the incredible team who worked so hard to build and will design, develop, and build this telescope ahead of schedule on budget.

We could not be more proud. And so I am delighted to hand over to the project manager of this incredible team, Jackie. Thank you Nikki. It's always so hard to follow the scientists, although today it might be a good day for me. So fortunately for us, the weather got the memo that Roman is always early.

So the storms came through early and that led us launch on time. That was fantastic. And man, what a glorious dawn launch. And and the ride was magnificent. We put us right where we wanted to be.

All of the deployments went, went great. In fact, we were able to sync up our S-band telemetry almost as soon as the fairing separated, which was our first opportunity. So that was fantastic. We've deployed the the lower instruments on shields and the and the solar arrays on shields as well. Those deployments went right on time.

We were power positive early and and now we have synced up with our first ground station at Canberra, and we were able to increase from the low rate telemetry to the less low rate telemetry still S-band until our high gain antenna deploys tomorrow. And that's it for me. I'm going to hand it off to Doctor Julie McHenry as well. It's so exciting to be here. A launch is such a transition point.

It's an end point for many of the engineers and technicians who put together this amazing observatory, the telescope that we have just sent into space is the one that we, the scientists, put forward. I can't remember how many years ago, but it's like, let's say ten. But the point is, is that through the course of building it, through the course of all the reviews, we didn't make compromises. What's gone up there is exactly what we wanted, but it's a transition because it's an end point for the engineers. But it's a starting point for the scientists, you know?

So it feels like I'm on the edge of a precipice, and we're just about to set a foot off into the unknown. That is going to be pointed out by what Roman is going to do. We're going to open Roman's eyes. We're going to see the sky in a new way with Roman for the first time. And I could talk about this kind of science that Roman is going to do.

And if you ask me questions, I might. But really, I think it's the excitement of having an extraordinary piece of kit opening its eyes for the first time. And we're just going to get blown away. And I can't wait. I'm looking forward to the next few months when we turn things on, figure out how well things work, actually get to play with well, play.

Use. Fine. This this observatory, this telescope, these instruments in space, in it's the environment that is designed for. And then the science is going to come rolling in. And, you know, I have I have no real good words because it's just so exciting.

And with that I'll pass it on to Denton. It's always tough to follow doctor McHenry. I almost want to give him my time so she can tell us more about the science. But launching is truly a team sport. And this magnificent team, the joint NASA space team as well as SLS 45, executed this launch campaign flawlessly.

As you all have heard, we're head of schedule, and it takes a lot of an agile team to be able to launch a mission of this magnitude ahead of schedule, and it takes an amazing team to have the spacecraft ready well in advance. That being said, this is a big spacecraft. We needed all 5 million pounds of thrust on that Falcon Heavy, which performed flawlessly. Booster all all three boosters perform flawlessly. So did the second stage, and as you heard, it dropped the Roman space above exactly where it needed to be.

And that's a monumental effort, because we know the more accurate the launch vehicle is, the more science we can get. And so we we did everything we can, and we worked very hard on this and work well with space and make sure that we had a very safe and accurate ride for the Roman space telescope, because we know the groundbreaking science that this spacecraft will provide for all of us. So that thank you. Thank you. And I'll start taking questions, starting with those in the room for media on the phone line.

Please remember to press Star one to enter the queue. We'll start on the first row at the end. Hello. Marcia Dunn, Associated Press two questions. First, for the Roman team besides the name, does a telescope bear anything personal that perhaps belong to Nancy Grace Roman?

Or perhaps a plaque or anything paying tribute to her, something personal and sentimental. And then also quickly for Jared. What's your target month for Artemis three next year? What's your best guess? Thanks.

So the. I think many of you may know we did send your name to space with Roman, and that plaque is actually it's my personal favorite photograph of Nancy Grace Roman, where she's looking up into the side and and some thoughts about her. That's the plaque that then holds the chip that has everybody's name. So yes, definitely something personal and representing kind of her, her approach to science. And we are on schedule to get Artemis three out to the pad for its wet dress before the end of the year.

And we are still targeting, I mean, essentially summer of 2027 for the Artemis three launch. So from Will. Will Robinson Smith of Spaceflight Now, thank you all for the time and congratulations. Question to Denton. And about the drop off point of the the spacecraft you mentioned.

It was it was exactly where you wanted it to be. Was it such that the second midcourse correction burn does not need to happen? Or are you still is the team still planning for that down the road? Thanks. Well, that'll have to happen.

Regardless of how accurate you are, they going to have to do a midcourse correction now because that was built into the flight design of the the trajectory. The first one for sure has to happen. And then the second one, we won't know until the first one is done. Right. We have to do our job well.

Second row. Out to aviation making space technology. Just a quick clarification. First for Jackie. The drop off is to the point where right now the a possible ten year, a ten year mission, the five year extension is on the table.

Would you say it is definitely on the table by flight dynamics? People would not promise me anything yet. So. But I think tomorrow after the midcourse correction we should have an answer for you. Jared, you mentioned the Space Academy in your opening remarks.

Is that an actual physical institute or virtual and any why is it necessary? What is it that you're thinking that the Space Academy will fulfill? So it will. It's a great question. It will absolutely be a physical institution.

I mean, this will be a new national academy. I think most people probably tend to think about, you know, West Point or Annapolis is a door academy. But you have, I would think, of the Space Academy to be much more akin to like the Merchant Marine Academy, which is under the Department of Transportation, where graduates have their choice to actually go to industry and have a reserve commitment back to the merchant Marines. They have they have an they can certainly go into other government service. Or like Mark Kelly, for example, you could go into the Navy and then become an astronaut someday.

So I think when you when you look at what is envisioned with the the Space Academy, which will be under NASA, you can see that's by design from the get go with the the commission that's been established for it, that this will be where potentially hundreds of new NASA civil servants come in to join, join the space agency every year. And they would also have the option to perhaps go into the Space Force or elsewhere. Now, why do we need this? I think it's the same answer is why did we create an Air Force Academy when that whole new domain really opened up after World War Two? Now, this isn't based on conflict.

It's based on the reality that we, you know, we are going from, you know, dozens of launches here at Kennedy Space Center not that long ago to hundreds. And now with a new national space transportation policy, potentially thousands a year. I mean, that's very exciting. There is no doubt this domain will continue to open for commercial, scientific, economic and obviously national security reasons to. But I think this is I think this is really exciting.

It's it's going to be great for America and the future of our space program. First row in the blue. Rosenstein spaceflight. This is probably for Jared. Maybe Nikki might be able to weigh in.

I mean, obviously it was so cool that you added a grapple fixture onto Roman to be able to potentially down the line, have people go in, either repair it or refuel it. And I know you tried with Swift and unfortunately that didn't work out. Is NASA and the science team looking into ways to try and save some of these older science missions, or do these kind of upgrades to past telescopes to prolong their life. And I also know before he became a minister, you were pitching ideas to NASA to rescue Hubble and bring it back. Are there any discussions still within NASA to send missions to repair Hubble or other satellites?

Well, you'll have to stay tuned, but I would say that I think everyone here would agree. I mean, the effort for Swift was I mean, it was totally spot on. Unfortunately, it wasn't the outcome that we were expecting, but that's exactly the type of missions that we should be flying at NASA. We will learn from that. And absolutely at some point in the future, why wouldn't you, if it was more economical to do so?

And we're still getting extraordinary science out of out of Roman. Take advantage of an on service capability. I don't know if humans will necessarily go on that one, though. Be exciting to think that might be a possibility in the future, but certainly it has the potential for robotic missions. Yeah, I think front row the white.

Yes. Burt at Astor magazine, National Space Society, a question for Jackie. You mentioned that this is an end point for the engineers and the technicians, and Roman is clearly a magnificent technological achievement. What do you see in terms of lessons, lessons learned for future telescope's future, future projects like this that will help us keep things ahead of schedule and on budget. So last summer, when it became clear that we were going to be delivering early, we started in the the front office of the project to the project to capture these lessons and do it in a way that told the stories of how we did it, not just write a paper.

And so we we are poised to launch that as well. It's under review inside the project right now. So I'm hopeful that come like January, we'll be able to start rolling that stuff out. But the thing that I can share immediately is it obviously was an entire whole team effort. And everybody on this mission learned how to do things the way that we did to be successful on Roman.

And those folks are currently going on to their next projects. Those who aren't supporting us for the next hundred days of commissioning are going on to their next projects, and they will for sure bring those lessons forward into their the rest of their journey with NASA. So that's exciting. No matter how good a job we do in capturing it and packaging it for the next project manager. And I'm just going to brag on the team because they also delivered their lessons learned ahead of schedule.

Jackie actually presented them this week to us. And as she said, they're going to go through final review. But and it is really, I feel, mandatory studying for all missions going forward. Thank you for throwing the black jacket. My question is for Mr..

I mean, of course, you have had the opportunity to fly into the space. When you look at Hubble's achievements during the era of 90s and 2000 and you compare it with this, what are your own memories of Hubble and what are your memories going to be from this telescope as well, since you were present in flesh? Oh, well, I mean, I just as I guess I mentioned during my remarks, I think the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is going to become a household name to the same extent that the Hubble Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope are, and I think they're all inspiring and enlightening and certainly gave extraordinary contributions to the scientific community. Nancy Grace Roman won't be an exception. It'll just be able to do so much more.

It's just such a much more highly capable instrument. So that's why, I mean, part of the reason why I want to be sitting here right now is to hear the rest of the team talk about everything. This, this great instrument of discovery is going to be capable of. So I think it's really all I have to add on it. So thanks.

Second row in the black polo. Hello I'm Kingston with Max. Q question is for Jackie and Jared for Jackie. How long do you expect the calibration process to take, and when do you expect the first pictures? And for Jared, how excited are you for Max power?

So our commissioning period last 90 days. That's our baseline plan. And so the first images should be down before the winter holidays. I'm very excited for Max power. I think everybody should be excited for Max power.

We're going to really bring the Shuttle Landing Facility to life in November. You know, looking at as an aviation enthusiast for a long time, and I hate taking away from Roman because this is what we really should be talking about. But we've got you know, we have the cash is a is a great fly in there. So for the general aviation community but all the big, you know, commercial aerospace conferences are overseas and we're going to have an opportunity to set up one right here at Kennedy Space Center, where, I mean, not only will you see amazing aircraft and all these futuristic Evol and other capabilities, but almost guaranteed you're going to have rocket launches and you think about in the years ahead, you're going to have probably lots of starships and New Glenn's come up. So yes, Max power is just the beginning of what I think will be a really exciting exposition that will happen here on the Space Coast.

Second row in the gray. Thank you. Jackie Goddard for the Times of London. Doctor Fox, you spoke yesterday in fairly anthropomorphic terms about the spacecraft. I know you folks all get very attached to these vehicles.

Can you talk a little bit about how hard it was to say goodbye today? Oh, I'm going to cry. Yeah. I mean, I know, I know, these guys feel the same because we've seen you see the spacecraft, you see it growing up, you know, and and then you, you particularly, I mean, the moment when we put, when we actually sort of put everything together and we were all sort of watching it and they lowered the top down onto the, you know, onto the main spacecraft. And it was just amazing.

And then you look at it and then it literally feels like it's part of your team and so. Well, it is part of your team. It's actually the member of the team that's going to go on this grand expedition and take all the data and send all that sort of incredible treasure back to us here, here on Earth. And so there is that moment where you, you know, where you know, you're never going to to see. He's not kidding.

So. Yeah. And you just know you're not going to see it again. And for me, actually I missed seeing it last week when I came down to the Cape. They just encapsulated and closed the fairing.

And I that I think was one of my worst kind of. Oh, no. Like, I really meant to get here earlier and go see it, but I think it's it's exciting. But there is that moment where you think, I'm never going to see that spacecraft again. And that feeling of, you know, it's never coming back.

Now you're excited. And I liken it to sending your kids to college. They're going to have great adventures. But yeah, absolutely. The president of the United States of America would like to address and congratulate everyone on this mission.

You're alive, Mr. President. Okay. I just want to thank everybody and congratulate you look beautiful on television. I just call Jared to find out.

Is there anything negative that I should know about? Like, it will never be able to return. Little things like that. He said no, it's looking great. It couldn't be better.

And it was another great successful launch. Jerry's doing a fantastic job. You are doing a fantastic job and I'm supplying you all that money. Well, Mr. President, you got a lot of smiling people in the room right now that are very happy to hear those words.

And we will put it to excellent use. Well, keep it up. We're back. You know, when I looked originally, when I got involved for the first term, my first month, I went to look at a couple of your locations, and I said, you probably heard it the other day. Well, we had that wonderful news conference, but grass was growing through the cracks in the runways and there were a lot of cracks.

And I looked, I said the place was closed. That's Florida in this case. And it was just literally closed. And now again, like we are with the country itself, with the hottest there is where the hottest the hottest in space, and we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. So let's keep it all going.

You're a big part of it. Let's keep it all going. Yes, Mr. President, thank you. We're all excited.

Jared. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Good luck everybody.

Goodbye. President of United States. Pretty excited about our next great mission of science and discovery. Sorry to interrupt. Back over to you.

I think I was done, I was just yeah, I defer my time to the president. Back to you, George. Do front row in the black. Hi. Hagan Warner with Nancy.

Space flight. Congratulations to NASA and the entire Roman team. I know you're very excited. I was wondering how you're planning on weaving in observations from the scientific community, from time allocation committees. How are you planning on interweaving those with the main surveys that are planned for the primary mission?

And then after the primary mission, I'm assuming everything is great, which I'm sure it will be for the secondary mission. Whenever you don't have those planned surveys, do you expect more scientific community observations from time allocation committees being approved during that time? Thank you. What a great question. So I think it's important to remember, like our surveys themselves also come from the community.

It's really a question of collaborative versus competitive. So we have four currently four community defined surveys. We also have a proposal process where people can make suggestions of things, additional things to do with Roman. We have intentionally. Put back pressure on that.

Our intent is that most of the of the of the additional surveys that will be defined via this proposal process will actually happen later in the mission. And that's because we wanted to make sure that we had the flexibility and nimbleness to respond with new Roman observations, to address and follow up on our own discoveries or on other discoveries that have happened that have happened from other from other facilities. In our first year of observations, the first couple of months, not exclusively, but we're really prioritizing getting observations for the coronagraph instrument. Let's get that technology demonstration nailed so that we can think about what we might want to do next with that instrument. We're then going to transition into the first season of looking right at the center of our galaxy for the first season of of the exoplanet observations, which is going to be good for the exoplanet observations.

But it's also going to give us one of the most extraordinary data sets that we will have, because we will be making a deeper, sharper view of the center of our galaxy, which is, of course, also going to tell us a lot about how our observatory itself operates. We're going to prioritize an initial deep field looking away from our own galaxy, and we're going to do a pilot survey to make sure that the time domain observations to find supernovae are well nailed. So you had an actual question, which I haven't addressed yet. We intentionally left space for additional observations. We've selected five more surveys.

We had a goal when we were soliciting those surveys. You know, let's prioritize things that benefit from being taken early in the mission. So we will be following up on the Kepler, on the on the fields that the Kepler Observatory looked at. And that will give us so much deeper precision so that you can connect the groundbreaking observations with Kepler to the new capabilities of Roman. In two and one and a half years time, we will be soliciting another set of observations, and those will be the first set of observations that will be motivated by what have we already found in Roman.

And the reason this all fits is that our large survey has a reasonable amount of scheduling flexibility. So we'll just move things around to put the other observations where they need to go. Will there be stresses tensions, occasional clashes? Yes. That kind of has already happened and we'll figure it out.

We'll make it all work. It will be great. Just a reminder to any media. Joining us on the phone line, please remember to press Star One to enter the queue. We'll go third row in the white.

With the Epoch Times. And thank you so much and congratulations. A question for Jared and Denton. You all just said that the next Falcon Heavy launch is going to be dragonfly, but is there any expectation that the there'll be an increased cadence launch cadence for Falcon Heavies, especially with unmanned launches for Moon Base in the future? I'm not looking at the manifest in front of me, but I suspect that was specific to SMD.

Yes, that's the science. Falcon Heavy is dragonfly because I do think there are. There's at least one moon based mission that I believe is manifest to it. And obviously of SR one freedom, though I suspect that will come after dragonfly. Excellent.

Third row on the end. Space news question for the administrator. It's great to hear the president call in and show us excitement about the Roman launch. I know the administration, in past years, in its first term, proposed zeroing out Roman and also proposed a serious cut in Romans budget just last year. What did you tell the administrator, the the administration and the president, the change his mind and make him so excited about a mission that he once proposed to cancel?

Well, it's clear that. Yeah, well, I'm glad Nicki was able to clarify that. It wasn't it was not canceled, nor was it zero in the president's budget request. It was at a lower level. But it was it was it was in, oh, in the first term.

I'm sorry. In the first term. Yes. So I thought you meant last year, but. Yes.

Okay. I would just say I mean, I suspect everybody in this room is, is, is part of the, the space loving community. You probably wouldn't be here. And the president of the United States is excited about our next great exploration asset that's underway. I think that's a great moment.

It's a great moment for the nation. Great moment, certainly for NASA to have a president so interested in our space program that, again, he was at Johnson Space Center yesterday and he was paying attention to the launch of this instrument today. So I'm incredibly grateful for his support, the space policy, the resources, sounds like from that call, maybe even more resources, which is also a great thing for more missions of science and discovery. And I do believe we are in we were entering a new golden age of discovery right now, and I think I'm going to have a lot to thank the president for on that. So thank you.

Front row the blue. Press. Congratulation, all of you. So I have a question for all of you. Is year from now, what discovery would make you personally say that the Roman mission exit everything you hope and you would accomplish?

You would accomplish? Yeah. That's huge. So a year from now, we will have found thousands of new exoplanets. We will have used the coronagraph to demonstrate new technologies in space for the first time.

We know we're going to do those things. We're going to be able to make a measurement of the number of free floating exoplanets, the ones that are no longer connected to their host star. We will have conducted our pilot survey of time domain survey. So we will be making new precise measurements of supernovae. Those same observations will allow us to catch the unexpected.

And I'm I mean, I didn't say I'm certain, but I'm pretty certain we're going to find something we didn't expect with that. And I think that that will probably be the most exciting result. But what we're really going to do in the first year is collect the observations that we need to reach Roman's extraordinary precision in calibration, because we use the observations that we collect, we've carefully defined, defined our surveys so that the surveys themselves will make the Roman data better and better. So when we talk to you, when we first show our initial glorious images, they will be beautiful. They will be able to produce great science.

But when we talk to you again at the end of that year, we will have significantly enhanced the science capabilities of the of the observatory and will be on the beginning of a journey. So I realized that wasn't particularly like a concrete answer, but we all have done lots of great things and I can't wait. For throw in the middle. Hello. Good morning, Marion Summerall with Central Florida Public Media.

Nicki, my question is for you. You mentioned that this telescope will help answer that age old question. We're always wondering, are we alone in the universe? How will this telescope helped pave the way for other observatories, like, for example, the Habitable Worlds Observatory? Yeah, that's a great question.

And so really, the launch of Roman and the, you know, the turn on and those images that come from that coronagraph for me is like that. That is the first milestone in the Habitable Worlds Observatory. I mean, we also talk about Roman as the most stable platform. And and, you know, both Jackie and Julie have said it. It takes an image and then it immediately slows and takes another one.

It's not like you take ages between the sluice. It's very, very stable. We will need that kind of stability. In fact, even more stability for the Habitable Worlds Observatory. And so it's as with everything we build on the telescopes, it's like you stand on the shoulders of the telescopes that came before you.

And so thinking about habitable worlds, most likely with the wavelengths of of Hubble, the size of James Webb, the coronagraph from, you know, from Roman. That's how we progress and we take industry with us, because the wonderful thing about our astrophysics missions in particular, is that we are forever asking for something that doesn't exist. And so we are always asking to push and do things better, more precisely in different ways. And so even like the the leaps that we've made in infrared remote sensing that now now benefit our agriculture and our farmers and, and, you know, things that you don't sort of think we're just that we do that. You heard about how incredible the deformable mirror technology is in the coronagraph.

It's just like nuts. It's so it's so amazing. Like, you know, doing a tailor made prescription lens almost for every star that we find, it's just incredible. And so we really take all this technology, and then we're going to turn back and say, okay, now we want now we want the next thing. But the coronagraph and all of the the data is going to really set us up.

Also with finding these possibly 100,000 new exo planets is going to really get it. That gives the habitable worlds a catalog to really go in and do that very detailed study. So we can look at the atmosphere, the cloud tops that is there, is there sort of changes in the atmosphere that could mean that something's changing down there. So yeah, very exciting. We have time for just a few more questions.

Second row in the blue. With talking space. Question for Jared. If you could ask a question of the press here and around the world as to something we could do to share not just the excitement of this moment, but excitement about everything that's part of NASA, what would you ask us? Oh, wow.

I mean, I first start, I would just say I want to very appreciative of the message you're already delivering. I mean, this is I don't know about the rest. I feel like every time I visit a center or talk to an intern or even just somebody who's paying attention on the outside, there's an energy right now on what we're doing at the space agency, and you're the ones helping tell, tell that story. So even right now, in this in this moment, right here in the middle of a press conference, I don't I mean, you all probably been covering NASA for a very long time. The last time the president of United States interrupted a press conference on a science mission, right.

I mean, this is pretty cool. I think this matters an awful lot because I've said it many times. I do think we all get the are fortunate to participate in the greatest adventure in human history. I do think it's just getting started, but and we're taking some steps in the right direction right now. Roman is a is a star, but the missions in the the years ahead will be, I think, pretty I mean, it'll be pretty transformational returning to the moon, building a moon base.

So I think you're doing great. I think you're really telling a fantastic story and you're getting the world excited about space exploration again. Thank you. And next, we'll take a question from the phone line from Ken Kremer with SpaceX up close. Hey, thanks for taking my call.

Sorry I'm not there. I'm looking at the pad right now as we're picking up our cameras. Congratulations on a great mission. So what I want to ask is you mentioned a little bit about the moon base and the Mars samples. I've asked you before about sample return.

Is there any update on the sample return, retrieving those samples from perseverance. And the other thing I want to ask you is about the promise Rover. You want to send it the moon? Why don't we send it to Mars? We don't have another rover, so why don't we send it to Mars instead?

Thank you. So there's there's some questions there. I've, as I've said many times, I think I think retrieving the samples from Mars can lead to I mean, I mean, the most significant breakthrough, scientific breakthrough in human history. There's no question we're going to go get samples, whether it's robotic or whether it's astronauts. Picking it up will be the question and certainly the timeframe associated with it.

But again, like I said, we're starting to get a lot of momentum now. So you never know. And look, I think the question is, you know, why would we send promise to the moon? Why wouldn't we send promise to the moon? We're committing a substantial amount of resources in the brain power of NASA and industry to establish the first outpost on another world.

And it's three and a half days away, and we can actually send astronauts there to live in that environment and test out habitability and new spacesuits and power and comms away from our home planet for extended periods of time. And why are we going there? Because we want to we want to explore the the permanently shaded regions on the lunar south pole where there's going to be water ice, which is, I think, a prerequisite not to mention for all the scientific potential of it, for actually sending humans to to Mars someday. So we've got the hardware, we've got the Pu 238 that's decaying. You know, that is definitely a use it or lose it type, you know, power source.

And so I think you're only weighing it against the opportunity cost of what is reasonably small dollars, since you already have the hardware and plutonium that you don't get back. So to me, it makes it an awful lot of sense to undertake that mission. But until we really lock in the scientific instruments, make sure we get a good return on the the effort and the dollars, we will remain in the liberation mode. Third row in the black of the middle. Thank you Isabel and mortar with said USA.

I have two questions. First, for Jared and Nikki. I'm really curious. Flag flagship kind of missions hold a lot of spirit and ambition for NASA, and with the momentum that NASA has right now, are we looking at potentially having an increase of those similar missions or discovery classes? And my second question is for the Roman team, there's no way to state how incredible this telescope is.

I'm truly at a loss for words myself. But the astrobiology implications, implications that this telescope's images will have. And looking for those trace signatures, is there anything about that that jumps out to you that you're personally excited to see? I mean, exoplanet seems to be the big thing, but if there's something else that we're missing, I'd be curious to know. So I'll take your first question.

You know, we're working very hard to find find efficiencies to be able to to put more of these big missions of science and discovery. We're really excited. Jared has brought a whole energy into the agency, and we are anxious to take advantage of that energy. And with every new opportunity that comes into the agency, we look at what we can do to put science on it. To actually do that, there are missions that we can do sort of in quotes easily.

You know, that space is hard, but more easily where we can take advantage of small commercial busses, put instruments on them. That's really good for space weather or we want multiple measurements. And then then that allows us to sort of make room to be able to do the really big, exciting missions like send a mission to Uranus, send a mission to Enceladus. You know, the more missions going to Mars with, as we think about closing the the risks, lowering the risks to finally be able to send humans to Mars, you know, NASA science is up to to to doing all of that, characterizing Mars, bringing back samples. And there I said it.

And and actually doing that to be able to really benefit the agency and of course, to take advantage of every single lunar opportunity. When we had our wonderful ignition event earlier this year, Jared put threw down the challenge to me that he wanted science on everything that left the planet. And we are up to that challenge. Yeah. And if I may, just to layer on to this a little bit, I mean, we are rebuilding core competencies at every one of the centers, centers of excellence, capabilities that you need in between missions.

And certainly here at Kennedy Space Center, you're seeing it with our Exploration Ground Systems team, Mission Control, which during the Apollo era was 100% civil servants. Up until recently, it was one civil servant in mission control is now 100% civil servants. And I'll tell you, and I've spoken to Nicki about this. And Jamie Dunn, who runs Goddard, is we look at Goddard. There needs to be teams of just spacecraft builders, engineers there that are never asking the question of I wonder what mission comes next.

They already know halfway through Roman, the next telescope or the next dragonfly that they are going to work on. And that's what you want out of that team is that when I finish this, what I start on next is going to be that much more inspiring and, and contribute great scientific value. And I'll tell you, and then in terms of how we should be building up to achieving really challenging things, you've probably heard me say we don't jump to the dream state build up to it. Look, I do believe that there are there are going to be missions to Mars and very well could have crew on it and transfer vehicles that are chem augmented, nuclear powered. Right.

But you could either jump right to that or you could start building up in a series of outer solar system science missions as risk reduction. Evers to continue to efforts to continue to improve the capabilities, power conversion and again, high temperature materials that go out and do science. We otherwise wouldn't take dragonfly. That's going to be about, what, 100W converted from a two kilowatt MMR TG, right? SR1 freedom is 100kW converting to 25.

What kind of science instruments can we put on in on on some spacecraft like that and that in that, by the way, is our imperfect Nautilus. Imagine what the SR two, SR three, and SR four will look like. So these are long answers. Say yes, we want to do more flagship science missions. We want them to build up to even more impressive capabilities.

The entire agency can take advantage, and I think there should be some dedicated teams that are always doing that. So there's never a question about what comes next. We've got time for one more question. Sorry. Oh yes.

Sorry to Rob. Yes. Well, so aside from the coronagraph, the wide field instrument doesn't directly do anything with astrobiology. However, our exoplanet survey is going to provide the first statistically significant about that. I mean, lots of planets at sort of the equivalent of one Earth radius and outwards.

So this is, for the first time going to tell us definitively how many planets do we typically get in the Goldilocks zone of around stars. So are we going to tell you anything specific about astrobiology on other planets? No, but we are going to tell you what kind of an observatory you need to build to take it to the next level, because we're going to tell you how many things you have to look at. We have time for one more question in the back, in the white. At Space.

com. Congratulations on the beautiful launch. It was such a treat to watch. First launch I ever saw. I think now I speak for many of us when I say we're looking forward to seeing the first results.

So I'm curious if you have any specific targets that you're looking for first and what we can expect when we see those. And then I'm also I think there's been a lot of talk comparing it to Hubble and James Webb, but I'm curious how it compares to some other surveys we have going on, like Desi, maybe like the Euclid Space Telescope, like how it can collaborate with those and how the specs compare. So I'll hit your last bit first and then hand over so you can say all the wonderful things. But obviously we mean we collaborate with all of all of the missions that we can. You know, Euclid in particular has a very, very big field of view, even bigger than Roman's.

But with Roman, you know, we can we can use some of their their surveys, do our own surveys. We have very we have the same sensitivity as better sensitivity even than Hubble. So, you know, we we do I think about it as everybody has their own unique role. But when you put that together and so with Vera Rubin, with Roman, with Euclid, with Webb, the idea of looking in the different wavelengths, sometimes you see the images. I know the pillars are creations, a great example.

You look at it in the Hubble image and it looks sort of like really beautiful. And then you look at the web image and it looks like it's got like angry claws. And because the, you know, things like the dust there absorbs visible and UV and then emits infrared. And so we're going to be seeing very different things when we look with, with these different telescopes. And it's really it's really important to do that because that's how you build up the whole picture.

And so one of the expressions Julia is used as building like 3D maps of the universe. And then being able to watch the way that universe changes over time. And so having all of these, it's kind of kind of like layering paint on a canvas. You layer the data and it just really unlocks the secrets of the universe. So I've forgotten the first half of your question, but I want to add a little to what Nikki has has just said.

So Roman, Rubin and Euclid, their siblings, they they were all proposed, prioritized at the same time. So the design of each of those observatories has been in the knowledge of knowing what the other ones were doing. So from the beginning, they have been designed to be synergistic. There are choices we made on Roman because we knew what Rubin was going to provide. The way that we conduct the observations are also synergistic.

There is a reason that most of Roman observations are in the Southern Hemisphere, and that's to maximize the overlap with Rubin. We're not competitors, we're stronger together, and we both need each other. Our synergies with the pointed mode observations take a different tone. When we talk about surveying the sky a thousand times faster than Hubble, it doesn't mean that we're making Hubble obsolete. Roman is going to do what Roman does really well, which is to sweep out large regions of the sky.

We still need Hubble to be doing what Hubble does really well, because Roman isn't going to be doing that. And it's not, you know, even in the place where we have overlapping wavelength coverage. And of course, Hubble adds extra capability in the ultraviolet. It adds it has some narrowband filters. There are things that Hubble can do that aren't duplicated on any of our other other observatories.

In some senses, you know, some of what Roman is going to do is to provide a finding chart I mentioned. One of the things I think of is that we're redefining what it means to find a needle in a haystack, and when we find those needles, Hubble and Webb can then follow up while Roman continues to go off and find new things. And before we close, I'm going to turn it back over to Administrator Isaacman for some closing remarks. Hearing a lot of good things about Hubble working alongside Rome and the. I just want to congratulate again the entire NASA team, especially all those Goddard JPL here at KSC and the launch services team, just for the outstanding work we know we've got.

We got a journey ahead less than a million miles to go. But I know we're all going to be eagerly waiting for that first light. So what a great day and appreciate you all joining us and covering this exciting story. Thank you. That's all the time that we have today.

Thank you for joining us to talk about NASA's Next Generation Telescope. You can follow the mission online at NASA. That's NASA gov. Thank you.

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