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

NASA and industry leaders participate in a prelaunch 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 Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. Participants include Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington; Lucas Paganini, Roman telescope program executive, NASA Headquarters; Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Denton Gibson, launch director, NASA’s Launch Services Program, Kennedy Space Center in Florida; 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 from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy is targeted for no earlier than Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026.

What is said in the film

Our universe is a very dynamic place that puts on spectacular cosmic displays every second. With Romans, panoramic vision will not only catch these events, but will see many at once. And use this to uncover the distribution of dark matter in our universe. Most of the sky remains to be explored. We're likely to not confirm current models, but to get to explore entirely new phenomena for the first time.

I think when you build an observatory that has profoundly new capabilities, the most exciting science is going to be the thing that you didn't expect. Good morning. I'm Liam Martin with NASA communications. Thank you so much for joining us for the pre-launch briefing. As we anticipate the launch of the agency's flagship Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

NASA and SpaceX are targeting 726 eastern tomorrow, August 30th, for this mission, which will be launching from pad 39 A atop a Falcon Heavy rocket. Now joining us today is a panel of specialists who will be sharing more about this mission. First, Nicki Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters. We're also joined by Lucas Paganini, Roman telescope program executive at NASA headquarters. Jackie Townsend, Roman telescope project manager, NASA Goddard Denton Gibson, launch director of NASA's Launch Services program at NASA.

Kennedy Juliana Simon, director of NASA science missions with space. And finally, Justin McReynolds, launch weather officer, 45th Weather Squadron at the U. S. Space Force. So we'll open with brief remarks from each of our subject matter experts, and then we'll take questions from the media here in the room as well as those calling in.

If you are joining us over the phone, please, please hit Star One to get in line. So without further ado, Doctor Fox, I will turn it over to you. Thank you so much. I think you can tell in the room everyone is really excited about this launch. And why?

Because the Nancy Grace Space Telescope will blow your mind. It is the size of a tour bus and it weighs the same as a T-Rex. So I'll just give you a moment to think about that, right? It will be also be the most stable telescope that we've ever flown, and the best cutting edge coronagraph instrument. Romans large field of view and fast survey speeds will reveal untold cosmic objects, while shining a light on dark energy and dark matter.

During its mission, Roman will discover tens of thousands of new planets, billions of galaxies, thousands of supernovae, and tens of billions of stars. And it will do all of that at a speed about a thousand times that of Hubble. It also has a field of view 100 times larger than Hubble. So to put into context, what Roman can do in a month would take Hubble a century, just one day of observing our universe. Roman will downlink 1.

4TB of data. That is an entire gaming system hard drive in one day. And that's a staggering amount of data. And if you think about that amount of data every day for the next five years, that would create a hypothetical stack of science papers that would reach beyond the moon. Romans data will help bring us closer than ever to answering humanity's most profound questions, like, how does the universe work?

What is the universe made of? Are there other solar systems like us, and are we alone in the universe? To put it into perspective. It will be as if Hubble and James Webb kind of peered through a keyhole at the universe. Well, Nancy Grace Roman will kick the door down, but Roman isn't just doing Hubble and Webb science faster, it's doing fundamentally different science that could not be done by either Observatory.

Together, these three flagship telescopes will combine their observations to give us a more complete picture of our cosmos and our place in it. With Roman will study galaxies across cosmic time, from the present back to when the universe was just half a billion years old. That's about 4% of its current age. And that's important as NASA leads the world in the search for life in the universe. And by understanding our universe's history, we can better understand how our planet formed and how life exists here on Earth.

Roman will photograph worlds, dusty disks and nearby stars in visible light to help see the giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot young Jupiters that we've previously imaged with other telescopes. Roman is kind of like a Swiss Army telescope, if you will. And it will bring us into a new era of space discovery, as well as reexamine the endless sky as we know it and unlock the foundation for our future flagship missions that will take advantage of this incredible technology and the journey that we've gone on to allow us to search for habitable worlds in in the future. One example, of course, for that is the Habitable Worlds Observatory, and that will use Romans unprecedented coronagraph technology to image Earth like planets around stars like our sun, and study them for signatures of life. Roman will be blocking out the sun to see atmospheres around older, smaller, colder planets than ever before, paving the way for us to do more and more to find Earth like planets.

Roman is the culmination of a 20 year collaboration across the world. I could not be more proud of this Roman team. We are nine months ahead of schedule and on budget, which is amazing, and it is a credit to this team that we are here today. Space is not for the faint of heart, and the Roman team exemplifies taking big risks for even bigger successes. Congratulations to everyone who has been part of Romans journey to launch tomorrow.

I can't wait for one to see the incredible images, probably around the holidays this year. And with that, I'm going to hand over to Lucas with the words go Roman! Thank you Niki. It's incredibly, incredibly exciting to be here with Roman. Ready to launch in the next few hours.

This moment is the culmination of years of work, dedication and innovation by an extraordinary team. And as you heard from Niki, Roman is going to give us an unprecedented view of the universe. But what I want to highlight is what these team has accomplished to get us here. Roman brought together people from across NASA, industry, academia and our international partners. Thousands of people across the country and around the world have contributed to this mission.

And to arrive at this moment on budget and ahead of schedule is an incredible accomplishment. The performance of this team has been truly remarkable. Roman also demonstrates how missions like these help maintain US leadership in science and technology, while advancing capabilities that will enable the next generation of space exploration and discovery. Roman is also advancing new technologies from its state of the art detector to its coronagraph, that will enable future missions and help advance NASA's continued search for life beyond Earth. So I'm incredibly proud of this team, and I'm grateful to everyone who brought us to this moment.

And now to tell you more about the observatory that is going to be flying in a few hours, I pass it over to Jackie Townsend. Good morning everybody. Am I on? Can you guys hear me? Oh, good.

Sorry I did not prepare remarks today because I decided to speak from the heart. And I'm excited to say there are some words there which is really good. I am excited and proud and humbled to be here today representing the incomparable Roman Space Telescope team. I wish we could all give them a standing ovation. As Lucas pointed out, it was literally thousands of people who made amazing, perfect and wonderful decisions day after day, shift after shift for more than a decade to go from where we started with a gleam in someone's eye with the acronym W, first to the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

And I've reported in countless briefings in the last week and a half that Roman is ready, the observatory is ready, the ground system is ready. The team is ready trained 1100 hours of simulations and just getting everything completely right. And maybe what I'm even more proud of is the science community is ready, because Roman belongs to the science community in ways at large, in ways that only a few flagships have in the past. And that is an amazing accomplishment. So with that, let me just also echo Niki and say, Go Roman and and go Roman science.

It's going to be amazing. And with that, I'll hand it over to Denton, our launch director. Good morning everyone. I'm excited and humbled to be here to be representing the NASA Launch Services Program. And as Jackie said, I'm the launch director for the NASA launch director for the Roman Space Telescope mission.

I can say representing launch services program. We've been launching NASA science missions on commercial launch vehicles since 1998, and Roman will be 118th mission. And I can say honestly that in all that time, we've I have never seen such a smooth launch campaign and be able to launch a science mission of this magnitude months ahead of schedule. And that was that's truly a testament of how well the Roman Space Telescope team has done developing and integrating this spacecraft, this monumental spacecraft. So it's definitely an honor to be able to to launch this for them.

And in that long history, we've had 15 missions with space now. And so we've continued to forge that great partnership we've had. And I'd just like to take a minute to thank all of the organizations that help us make this launch campaign to smooth it. Of course, the NASA Team Space and our friends at the US space launch Delta 45 to to get us to this point. So last week we completed our mission dress rehearsal, which is a simulated countdown where we really exercise the team, working through communication and working through anomalies to make sure that we're ready for the big day tomorrow.

We also completed last week. We also complete our flight readiness review, and just yesterday we completed both the Space Launch Delta 45 launch rate interview, as well as the joint NASA Space Launch Readiness Review, where leadership from all three organizations committed to launch tomorrow morning. And with that, I would like to play the video that we have for you. All right. This is Roman arriving on the barge, and they kind of sped it up there.

But it's June 21st, and this is then bringing it into the payload processing facility that we have here at Kennedy Space Center. And there there you see them unpacking and you could see it breaking over, rotating into vertical and coming up. And there you see how massive Roman is in that payload fairing. It takes up almost the entire Falcon payload fairing there. It is encapsulated in this transporting to the hangar at 39 A.

You can see it happened overnight and that occurred August 24th. And then you got a good shot. This is representative shot. This is not an actual video. This is representative shot of the Falcon Heavy in the hangar there.

Did a good shot. And then of course we made it the encapsulate assembly to the launch vehicle on August 27th. And again this is another representative shot of what it looked like when we rolled out late last night and in the wee hours of the morning. And we're going to give you a quick treat preview. We're going to cut to Live Shot shortly after this, and you can actually see what it looks like sitting there on the launchpad.

So so if all goes well and weather permitting. About 625 tomorrow morning, we will pull the team to commit to propellant loading where we will load the density propellants onto the Falcon Heavy launch vehicle. And if everything goes as planned, at about 7:25 a. m. tomorrow morning, the launch vehicle lift off and we will get to see the Falcon Heavy lift off and put Roman on orbit where it belongs.

And with that, I would just like to say Roman's ready. As you've heard, Falcon Heavy is ready and the launch team is ready and excited for this epic mission. With that, I would like to turn it over to my partner in crime, Gianna Sharman. Thank you Denton. Thank you.

As you said, you can feel the excitement for everyone here. I am super excited to be here today to talk to you about Falcon Heavy launching the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The data and discoveries from Roman will expand our understanding of the universe and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. And at space, we carry that spirit with us every day. We've been working with the NASA team, the NASA science teams, the NASA Launch Service program teams for about 15 years to launch some amazing missions.

Falcon heavy has launched psyche to a metal asteroid, Europa Clipper to Jupiter's icy moon, and we've launched goes, which provides critical weather observations. And Roman continues that legacy of launching on Falcon Heavy. Super excited. I remember about ten years ago when we first started talking with the Roman team, then w first about how we were going to fit that spacecraft in our fairing. We figured it out, but it's really a testament to the team, and every single person has poured over every single aspect of this mission, from the smallest thing to the biggest thing, every single thing.

And I know I speak on behalf of everyone when I say, we could not be more proud to be reaching this milestone, to be this close, to launch and and be here today. So very exciting. Roman is just the beginning. We have a fleet of science missions coming up, including on Falcon Heavy, namely dragonfly, which is launching to Saturn's moon Titan, and the Rosalind Franklin mission, which is a mars mission, and Mars rover. And, you know, that's just the beginning of the science.

That space enables that space. We make science fiction reality, and that's what we're doing when we talk about our next generation vehicles like Starship and Starfall. Starship is a fully reusable launch vehicle and lander that can enable never before possible science missions landed on the Moon and Mars. Imagine bringing your terrestrial lab to another planet. Think about the order of magnitude of discoveries we can enable.

And Starfall is our low cost, affordable microgravity research platform that enables in-space manufacturing and recurring access to Leo to enable science research. So that's some exciting things we have cooking here at space, but focusing on Roman. Very, very excited to be here. As you heard everyone say, we have gone through all of the various milestones we've gone through, every single check you can imagine, and everything is looking great on the rocket we're tracking. No issues.

The vehicle's vertical and I cannot wait for tomorrow morning. So over to the man of the hour, Justin, to talk to us about the weather. Yes. Good morning everybody. My name is just McReynolds.

I'm with the space launch Delta 45, the launch weather officer for this mission. And there's always a buzz about whether, especially at this time of year. So we'll start with some positive news first. This morning, the National Hurricane Center is observing two different area disturbances out in the Atlantic basin. I'm happy to report that for at least our first few attempts here, those don't seem to oppose any impact to us going forward.

So good news. At least they're going back to home. We've had a bit of a what's called an offshore pattern here, where we have our south westerly winds that are pushing offshore, and we're getting this sort of turned back to onshore wind. So the southeasterly east south easterly winds, which tends to kind of give us a bit of a wetter pattern in the mornings, which it could be good for us rolling out in the evenings. But unfortunately we're looking at this morning instead for Roman.

That being said, we also have a bit of a upper level disturbance that's looking over Cuba and that's giving us more moisture inflow and all of that. So as we go to our forecast for tomorrow, we are looking at a probability of violation of 50%. So we're looking at 50% go when it comes to weather. And that just has to go with the idea of that. We believe there's going to be some weather around.

It's the question of is the weather going to be over the pad or away from the pad? Our primary concern with this is, of course, the cumulus cloud rule. And that is basically talking about the cumulus clouds that form like we have a big puffy fairweather clouds and they can become showers, thunderstorms as they continue to grow. And depending on how high they are, that's how much we are worried about either natural or triggered lightning with how close it gets to the pad. So it's a big concern.

Otherwise, as we're looking forward to our backup days being either Monday or Tuesday, we're still keeping this onshore flow, but we're losing that tropical disturbance that's out over Cuba. It's kind of pushing over to the West, and we're going to more of a normal probability of violation with a 30% chance or a 70% chance go. And that is what I have for the weather for now. Thank you so much, Justin. I will say I think it is incredibly special to spend the final hours ahead of launch with some people who have put so much of their heart and soul into this mission.

The enthusiasm is just absolutely infectious. And so thank you guys so much for being here and for kind of being the pep rally that we need going into these last couple of hours before launch really, really special. So with that, we will turn it over to start taking some questions. If you are online, I'm sorry if you were on the phone joining us, if you can dial star one to get in line, then we're actually going to start here in the room. So we'll start on.

Right. We'll we'll start with you. Hi. Thanks, liane. Thank you all for taking the time with us today.

Will Robinson Smith with Spaceflight Now question for Denton and Juliana. The Falcon Heavy is flying with one new side booster, one that's flying for its third time. Can you explain why that configuration for the Falcon Heavy. And then just looking towards the future, you know, it seems like the signs are pointing towards the eventual retirement and transition to Starship as that rocket continues to develop. You talk about the partnership between space and NASA for these exquisite science missions as Falcon becomes less available, or is there a push to keep Falcon nine on to have it be an available rocket for NASA missions?

Thank you. Take the first, whichever you'd like. Okay. All right, so in terms of the Falcon Heavy configuration, why one has used in all this new for such an exquisite mission, there's very stringent mission criteria that we we have for our missions. And those were the boosters that actually met our criteria in terms of reliability, in terms of any any risk or concerns that we may have.

And I'm talking NASA LSP that I have. So we made sure that we do a better review, ensure that the boosters are tested right, has the correct qualified service life, etc.. And so we go through that. And those are the three boosters that our team were able to get comfortable with for this mission. Yeah.

Just to expand on that a little bit, I mean, to step back, how cool is it that we're in living in a world with rockets where we have a fleet of potential available boosters with which one can choose from and where, you know, what would I like? Oh, that one sounds good. Yeah. You know, so that's it's an amazing reality that we live in. I also wanted to point out that the, the side booster that has flown before did fly on a NASA mission.

It flew goes, which is pretty fun too. But as Denton said, we partner to make sure that the hardware we're flying meets all of the NASA criteria. And I fully expect a lot of this hardware to fly again and again, potentially for NASA or other customers, including our upcoming Space Force launch. That's after the Roman Space Telescope mission will fly those same side boosters. The other part of your question was essentially how SpaceX is working with NASA on science missions.

And one of the things that I came to space to do was to enable science. And that's one of the things I'm super excited about that we've been able to do as a team. It's been really amazing to see how when I started SpaceX, just in that period of time, to switch to having a reusable rocket and how that lowered the cost of access to space, which in turn changed the way the NASA science teams contemplate new missions. And we're already living in this universe where there's a proliferation of distinct science missions. It's really been amazing, and I believe the next generation of that is is available with Starship.

I mean, I touched on it lightly in my remarks, but when you think about such a paradigm shift of the amount of performance Starship has and like I said, the concept of being able to take what would normally be a terrestrial lab and put it on the moon and put it on Mars, it's definitely a different way of doing science, but I think it's really an empowering and amazing way to do science. So I know we've been working really closely with the science teams to come up with that class of mission and those amazing missions, and we'll continue to do so. Pretty fun. Okay, we will right here. And then we'll go over here to the side in the orange chat.

I want to come back to the weather situation. We've had the flow pushing most of the storms inland, and now you're telling us that's going to change? Sure. Yeah. We've been having I guess that that's sort of on or the offshore flow that we were getting before was kind of pinning it on the Cape.

Our onshore flow that we're switching to indeed does push the storms inland in the afternoon and evening hours when we start to get that sea breeze percolating. But when it comes to the early morning time, we start to worry about showers forming along the Gulf Stream and then pushing onshore, basically ahead of the sea breeze formation that we see usually around the, you know, the afternoon hours. So it's a uniquely a morning problem, unfortunately. So you're saying 50% can approach what are the criteria to bring the maybe up to 70% chance. What would that be like?

Hey, there you go. Well funny enough, we do have that. We do bring it up to that 70% chance on the backup days. And that really is just because we lose that sort of upper level circulation above. That's adding to the moisture and the, the, you know, it makes it easier for the storms to be unstable and to grow and to exist in that sort of position.

So if we were to lose that sort of feature, then we would find that 70% with that wind flow. Great. We'll go over to this side of the room right here. My question is for Doctor Fox, with the ability to download 1. 4TB of data on a daily basis, and the distribution of so many teams around the world having access to that information.

Are you planning to address specific areas for focus for those teams? Like, we would like you to focus on this particular area for for just to maximize the chances of finding amazing stuff. Thank you. Yeah. So that's a great question.

Obviously we have teams that are embedded in the in the Roman team. They've been working. They're the ones who sort of decided what the great science we want to do is. And those teams will be focused on particular areas. But really for us it is about, you know, embracing, embracing the open data policy that we have an essay as you hurt.

If you listen to the science briefing before, there is no proprietary time. So, you know, the high school students will get this as the same time as a Nobel Prize winning scientist at a prestigious university. And that's what makes Roman such a special telescope and such a special asset. But we also encourage, because we we provide the ability to do the work in the cloud. So we provide tools, we provide it to really make it not just accessible, because I can give you data, but if I don't make it usable, you're not, you know, it's not helpful.

And so there's an, you know, you can actually form a team and share products and things through the cloud. And so this is really about a new way of making our science really available, accessible and actually promoting that collaborative spirit. So if somebody is really interested in in exoplanets or they're interested in, you know, measuring the ancient universe, you can actually find like minded people and work there on the cloud together. Thanks. Fantastic.

For the next question. We'll go to the phone. We have Stephen Clark with Ars Tecnica. Before she. As a on board first.

Question from the room and then we'll go back to you. Stephen. Right up here, please. Hi. Hagan Warner with NASA space flight.

I think this one will be for Jackie immediately following separation. What will Roman teams be looking for on the telescope? Will they be attempting to immediately establish communications and then go into deployments? If you remember, Webb had a very complex deployment sequence immediately following deployment deployment from its rocket. So I was just wondering if we'd see something similar if you'll let me start deploying the solar array sunshade, or if you'll hold off on that and just start immediately beginning on working to get the telescope online.

Thank you. So we our first opportunity to sink in S-band happens when fairing separation, which is less than five minutes after launch. But then as you indicated, about 30 minutes after launch when we separate from the from the rocket and we're on our own, that's the second opportunity where we where we attempt to sync up and that is where we do our sun synchronization so that we know our attitude and it's in control. And then just before an hour in is when we begin our deployments of our solar arrays and the lower instrument sun shields and about an hour and eight minutes in, we expect to be power positive. Okay, we'll take one more in the room while we work to get our technical back online.

Jean, we'll go with you. Jean. Right. Space up close. Not really a question, just to comment.

When I found out Nancy Grace, I'm going to tear up. When I found Nancy Grace was named as the would be our first woman being named for a telescope, I had to do my research on her, and it was just amazing to me. From the age of 11 when she started her own astronomy club with fellow students, and she was discouraged from her desire to study astronomy, a career that was traditionally reserved for men. And as an older woman, I to remember fiercely wanting a career that that was nontraditional, that was nontraditional, but not achievable for me at the time. Nancy Race Nancy Grace Roman did not wait for science to make room for her.

And being NASA's first chief astronomer laying essential groundwork for Hubble, she advocated for women in science. She helped build the future of space science, and now a telescope carrying her name will open an even wider view to the universe. And for young women like younger women, I think she's a great encouragement for this. So thank you all. Sorry.

It's just emotional for me to see that I never I never was encouraged. I'll be 71 in October. We never were encouraged at my age to do anything like this. So it's amazing to me to see the women on the team. We have a telescope name for a woman and I think it will encourage women, people all around, but especially young girls, and I'm happy for that.

So thank you for getting me. Let me do this. Thank you. Okay. Well, that's a hard one to follow.

But we are going to. We are going to try to get back get connected with Steven again. Steven, are you on the line with us? Good morning. Can you hear me?

There we go. Sounds great. Go ahead. Steven. Great.

Steven Clark from Seneca. My question, I believe, is for Jackie Townsend. Noticed that Roman has a grapple fixture on board. I think it's the first NASA science mission to have that capability in more than 30 years, if my memory serves. So I'm wondering if Jackie can talk about, you know, the decision to add that to the observatory and what other changes or design decisions were made to potentially enable satellite servicing for Roman down the road?

Thanks. Yeah. When Roman was handed its its approval to proceed and its cost cap, we were also handed a handed a requirement to accommodate servicing. I happen to have worked the Hubble servicing missions for a long time. So I have the benefit of knowing that while people think of serviceability as it either is or it isn't, in fact, it's a it's a graduated spectrum.

And while Roman is nowhere near as serviceable as the Hubble Space Telescope was, we do have everything that's necessary to enable the rendezvous and capture and docking between a hypothetical servicer. That's the point of the grapple fixture. And then in in 2020, when we were baseline, we were told that we would focus on refueling. So there is the the blanketing around the fueling port has has been designed especially so that it's easier for a robot to get in there if we needed to refuel. And in Romans case, that's the only expendable, the mission expendable.

So if somebody has a servicer available for us in the next 5 to 10 years, we would be able to be to be refueled out at center, sell to. Fantastic. We'll go right here. Josh. Go ahead, Jason, you can do it.

There we go. Hi, Josh. Dinner. Space. com.

Can you talk a little bit about the significance of the orbital location that Roman is headed to? What is the additive nature of Lagrange point two to its mission? And about 24 hours after launch, there is a mid correction burn for for the spacecraft. Can you talk about the importance of that and how that is contributing to reaching the Lagrange point? Okay, so Sun-Earth Lagrange is out past the orbit of the sun.

I'm sorry, out past the orbit of the moon, which means that the bright objects the moon, the Earth, and the sun are all on the same side of the observatory. And we actually orbit around that, that stable point. And that means that we have a wide open view of the sky that really exceeds anything in low Earth orbit like Hubble could achieve. So some of that speed that we have, the advantage that we have over Hubble is because we're not in low Earth orbit. The Earth isn't blocking our view.

So we we have we're able to access this guy more frequently. And I already forgot the second part of your question. Oh, the midcourse correction burn, right. So we actually have two midcourse corrections planned. The first one is just after one day in the second opportunity is four days in.

Now, if we get a absolutely perfect tip off from a release from the space rocket, we will have low enough deviations from the plan that that first midcourse correction could be small and and we would not need the second midcourse correction. But of course it's our fuel that we are expecting in these midcourse corrections. So the better our send off from space, the less fuel we expend getting into the perfect orbit out at sun, Earth, Lagrange. And then the more fuel we have to conduct science past our five year prime life. Fantastic.

As a reminder to those of you who are joining us over the phone, if you'd like to ask a question, you can dial Star one to get in line. We're going to go back to the room here for a question on this side. And then Ken, you'll be next. Thank you. Irene Klotz with Aviation Week in space technology either for Jackie or Juliana.

What is the orbital inclination and altitude at payload deployment and what is driving the launch windows? Yeah. So the way the way to think about it is we are sending the Roman Space Telescope Observatory essentially to a very specific target. And so when you're thinking about a launch window, you can think about essentially that spot in space. Essentially the way I visualize it, at least I think about it moving overhead.

But if you want to go to a very specific spot, the amount of time you have to actually lift off and actually target the exact spot as it's moving, that's what limits the launch window. That's when we think about essentially an instantaneous launch window. So for Roman, it's about a 32nd launch window to largely just enable the Cola, a potential collision avoidance maneuver if needed. But it's essentially an instantaneous launch window to meet the really tight orbit injection requirements. The way we we often define the orbit parameters for a mission like this is usually in terms of C3.

So kilometers per second squared essentially like escape energy. But when you're thinking about it in a more colloquial sense, just think about it a little bit of an apogee over a million miles away, sorry, 1,000,000km away. And if you want the very specific orbit, I can follow up with you after, but it's basically pretty far away. If I need a Falcon Heavy, it's pretty heavy, pretty far away. Is that anything you want to?

Okay, Ken. Hi. Ken Cramer, SpaceX up close. Thanks again for doing this. And good luck tomorrow.

My question for Nikki. First, congratulations on your award recently. And pleased to see so many women involved at NASA and at space too. It's fantastic. I want to ask you to look again in the future a little bit.

You mentioned the Habitable Worlds Observatory. Can you tell us a little bit about the status? Is that even an approved mission right now? But it's the kind of like science you would do. How big would it be?

Would it need to launch on a starship? Maybe you can talk about that too. Thank you. Yes. So very happy.

The the technology development has been very well supported. And so what we are doing, we sort of, you know, think about lessons learned from missions before we know that the Habitable Worlds Observatory is going to what, you know, Roman is basically the first milestone for the Habitable Worlds Observatory. When that coronagraph gets on to orbit and starts taking data, proves the technology that is for me is box number one of of Habitable Worlds Observatory. But there will be a lot of design that needs to go in. The Roman Space Telescope is a very, very, very stable telescope.

Habitable worlds will need to be even more stable to be able to do what it wants to do. It will be our first life detection mission. So we're very excited about the fact that it is going to look for habitable worlds. And so right now, we are concentrating very hard on getting all of the technology developments done. We don't want to start a mission and then realize, oh, we have to do, you know, we should have done this.

So we're doing the should have done now. We have great partnerships with our industry, you know, industry astrophysics specialists, as always, with every single astrophysics mission. We push industry to new levels because we don't want to do what we did yesterday. We want to do what we want to do tomorrow. And so every single time we do these, we push the capabilities of industry, particularly in like adaptive optics, precision optics, precision platforms will have to be on next generation.

And so we're putting a lot of focus on getting all of that ready, so that when we say we're going to go, it will be like Roman and it will be ahead of schedule and on budget, she said. So there you go. Probably need to keep the Roman team, maybe. But, you know, Jackie's not busy after 100 days. So she told me.

But really, seriously, it is. It is putting together a team as good as the Roman team and and having our industry partners with us to be able to really do what only NASA can do. Can you do you need Starship for that? I mean, we would be discussing we certainly will need, you know, Julianna noted, or maybe Lucas, that we fill the fairing. And so, you know, we would definitely we need a big fairing to be able to do that.

I can't comment on what would be underneath the fairing, but I can tell you that we need a big fairing. Okay. We'll go back to the room right here. Thank you. So NASA's space flight.

This is for Denton and or Juliana. I was wondering if you can tell me which boosters are the core stage, which is the plus y and the minus y you've got flying on this one. The ones that you trust so much, and also wondering if you have the T0 to the second. I know it's like a 32nd window, but to the second for this attempt. And if we end up on the wrong side of 50%, what it would be for tomorrow, thanks.

Or the day after. All right. So yeah, it. So first of all, to the second of be 49 seconds. And in terms of tomorrow it would shift by a few minutes.

Excuse me. If we end up on Monday, it'll shift about a couple of minutes in terms of t0. And which one is plus versus my I can't recall loss of my head. Be honest with you. After I'm happy to give it to you.

But you have the numbers at least. Yeah, I'll pull it up after you know exactly which ones which. We'll go right here. Hi, everyone. Congratulations.

First of all, my question is how will NASA make sure Roman's are accessible? That not only in the major institution, but also researcher and student in place like Africa, let's say Congo in and order on the represented region. So sorry, was your question. How will we make sure that that it is available literally by making by by making the data the portals are open or they will be the moment the data starts flowing. There are tools, there will be tutorials.

If you actually you can go to NASA gov Roman, start reading about it now. Start learning about the different types of studies and the different types of science that we're focusing on. That is all available right now. There are a lot of great outreach programs that we have. We have a citizen science program that you can get involved in.

So really this is about ensuring that, again, the data are not just accessible, but they are usable with, you know, with with that sort of advice and guidance beneath it. I will also say we do have a really great open science training that you can do. It is free at NASA. That, again, will get people ready and more comfortable with being able to use our data. You don't have anything.

So how we can use that? We we you know, we can certainly work with with other space agencies in the region and see how we could maybe help support that. Thank you. And next question we'll go right here. How do you feel as a only South American representative in this project?

That's a good question. Thank you. Yeah, I was born in Mendoza, Argentina. I couldn't even imagine as a as a kid being said it here at Kennedy, I still believe this is a dream, but but even then, what's incredible has been to work with this amazing team and to learn from the way they build this mission, how they work on their schedules, how they can overcome. You know, we went through a pandemic.

We went through a shutdown the longest in US history. So there's a lot of lessons learned. And I'm sure those lessons learned will be applied to the future great observatories that NASA is going to be building. Okay. I think we have time for a couple more questions.

So we'll. Oh, sorry. Yeah, absolutely. Plus y side booster is 1104. The center core is 1105 and 1072 three is minus y.

Of course. Love a woman with numbers. Okay. We'll take a few more questions. We'll go right here.

And then Manny, we'll go to you next. Thank you. Jackie Gutter for the Times of London for Nikki. You've launched some pretty cool stuff at NASA to date, but can you talk about how where this ranks in terms of engineering feats? This is an observatory that was once thought impossible.

So can you just expand, expand a little on the the complexity and the sensitivity and why something like this has been such an elusive target till now? Yeah. I mean, it gets down to the fact that at NASA science, we always push the boundaries. And so everything we do is doing, you know, doing something that we did, we couldn't do what we didn't do before. Every telescope that we launched, you know, we do the lessons learned, we learn.

We take the technology that was created for a previous mission. We, you know, we make it better and we push forward to, to do this. You know, I, I said before, I'm going to even say it now, officially, that I have not been as excited about a science mission launched since Parker Solar Probe. So that's a pretty big one for me. And and when I came onto the bait, I mean, again, it's an electric atmosphere here at Kennedy.

And like, everyone is ready for this launch. And, you know, we we know that this is going to revolutionize our understanding of the universe. And I, you know, when you hear the scientists talk about what they're going to learn from this mission, how long they've waited to answer these questions, you know, the fact that Nancy Grace Roman postulated how great it would be to actually launch a telescope into space and study stars and planets and kind of paved the way for for what we do now, you know, in the science briefing, if you haven't had a chance to watch it, please. Do. You know, Julie talked about just the fact that we have a model of the universe and with with the data we've been taking with the other telescopes, it's showing that the model isn't quite correct.

And you know that we know that when we launch this mission, we will have an actual model of the universe that not just for a single moment, but something for years that we can study how it's changing. And so to say we're going to revolutionize our understanding of the universe is not, you know, just like a publicity statement, it will. And and that we will start proving the textbooks or rewriting the textbooks within months. I mean, yes, it's five years to be able to do everything that we want to do, but we are going to be looking, you know, making the first direct measurements of exoplanets around distant stars. We are going to be measuring dark energy and dark matter.

And that's like measuring the fabric of the universe and the energy that powers it. And we've never been able to do that in in the way that Roman is going to do it. We'll we'll look at swaths of the sky that we've never looked at before. You know, you'd think Hubble has done this incredible science. It's looked everywhere.

It's looked at these amazing things. But there's so much of the sky that we haven't ever looked at. And that's what Nancy Grace Roman's going to do for us. Go, Roman. Okay, Manny, we'll take a question from you.

Thank you very much. With a question for Nikki or Lucas. We know that the telescope will take 100 days to reach L2 point. We know what it's going to happen after a few hours after deployment. Can you briefly describe those 100, 100 days?

From the previous briefing? We know that some instruments are going to be turned on and some science begin. So we have a 90 day commissioning plan. The first ten days or so is, as is typical, is just outgassing, letting the deployment settle out, getting power positive, getting the temperatures to where they're going to be as we're on our our big cruise. And then the next 30 days or so is commissioning the spacecraft, making sure that all of the kind of infrastructure parts of the bird are doing their job properly, and that is the period of time where we will begin powering on the instruments, but not actually taking measurements with it, not doing science with it.

It really is making sure that the instruments are working as designed. They survived all the various bumpy ride elements from the fairing all the way out to up into orbit. And then the second 45 days of that 90 day commissioning is what we call science commissioning. So that's when we start tuning the optics. That's where we start getting it into shape.

We'll be doing some calibration and validation activities with real observations of real stars, to make sure that what we did on the ground maps as perfectly as we expect up into an orbit, so that we are ready at the end of those 90 days to just power into our early science operations. Fantastic. We this time will go to the phone. We have a Katrina miller with the New York Times online. Katrina, hi.

Thank you so much. This question is just for anyone who wants to answer. Nicki already kind of answered it, but I'm just curious how you all are feeling up to leading up to the launch. Is there more nerves or excitement? 100% excitement powered by dark energy?

I will say that it is a calmness around this team and around this launch. You know, obviously we're worried about the weather, but you know, please, you know, think good weather vibes for us tomorrow morning. But it is it is a calm. The teams hit every milestone. They've hit them ahead of schedule.

It really just is excitement a little bit I know it. A lot of the team is a little bit of disbelief just because, you know, when you've put your heart and soul into all of this and then suddenly it's here and I would think as well there's, there's, there's a little bit of sadness in the team because we're not going to see that telescope again, you know. And when you work on these missions, the telescope becomes part of your team. It is, it is. It may be a piece of technology, but it's to to to us, it's got a personality and you see it and you're used to seeing it, and then suddenly you're never going to see it again.

You know, it's going to go and do great things, but you're never going to see it again. So I think it's quite a lot of mixed emotions. Yeah, I would say that definitely. It's been a team that's been together for more than ten years. Even though we formalized this mission in in 2016.

But what is most exciting? I was you know, I'm excited for for many reasons. The first one is that, you know, we had these questions about the universe for so many years, and we might be about to discover what the universe is made of. Like it? It's something it could be like obvious.

Like we should know what the universe is made of. Well, actually we don't. So that's incredibly exciting. And knowing more about these planets beyond the sort of system, try to understand our own solar system and how common those are in the in the galaxy, that's also incredible. But also, we're not here to talk about the observatory.

We're going to build. We're about to fly it. And that's incredible. For me. I expected to be feeling kind of anxious and nervous and excited and all of those things.

But actually, after we finished the launch readiness review, it was that calm kind of descended. So for me today, this moment right now, it feels like we're at the peak of an old time wooden roller coaster. And we're in the front car, right? So we've been ratcheting up slowly over the last decade up that very tall hill, and we've peaked, and now we're just hanging and waiting for the weather gods to tell us that it's okay to go. So it's going to be great.

Yeah. And then feeling a lot of vibes. Yeah. And, and I would say from the, from the launch side of the house, we're honored that we've been entrusted to launch such a monumental spacecraft. So that's an honor.

And it's exciting because this is what we live for and because we know this is such a monumental spacecraft. We've worked very closely with space X to do everything in our power to make sure that we get Roman on orbit safely and as accurately as possible. Yeah. I mean, I said it already. It's beyond exciting to be here today.

It's beyond exciting to be entrusted to do such an amazing mission and to have partnered with the team for so long. I will say it feels every time you launch a rocket, it's an amazing experience every time. It never gets old. And yet, working with this team, we have a rhythm to it. We know.

We know each other, we know how we work. And that also brings forth a sense of calm. So we're ready. We're focused on the mission. Cannot wait for tomorrow morning.

It's been kind of incredible to just kind of hear the stories that come out of this team. You know, I came really we kind of get involved a little late in the process since weather is a little finicky. We have to wait for that short term. But it's been incredible to see everybody really just synergize. And you hear the stories spanning so many years.

I've been, you know, I've been telling and all the folks that I know, I'm like, I can't believe they put me on this mission, you know? And it's been just a joy. And I'm really hoping that we're able to deliver some good news for you guys, if not tomorrow, in the coming days. Fantastic. Okay, I think we have time for one more question.

We'll go right back here to the back of the room. I've got one quick question that as a journalist in Asia, we all have very incredible memory of going through Hubble's excavations during those period and 20, 30 years back. But what are the formidable challenges that Romans saw ten years back? And what are the incredible memories as a team that you all overcame to sort of be part of this, this journey? So for me personally, both the the challenges and the most exciting moments are the ones where the team comes together like NASA does, to work the problem and get to resolution.

So as a project manager for me, a lot of those problems that get worked and challenges that we have to overcome are are more human than they are technical, but it's really that same set, that same toolbox that we all learned in engineering or science class about how you methodically break down a problem and figure out what tools you have to attack to tackle it, and what resources your team can bring to bear. So whether it was a cost cap before we even had a mission design or a detector that wasn't working in our last thermal test, right. This team just comes together and knocks it out of the park. It is just it really is an honor to serve and to be counted among the Roman Space Telescope team. And that is true for all of our partners, the ones that are here on the table, the organizations they represent, you know, ESA, our international partners, our industrial partners.

I mean, it is amazing. And it is a testament to what we can do as humans when we decide that we're going to do it. And I would just say from a scientific sort of piece, you know, you mentioned Hubble. I mean, I remember gasping at seeing Hubble images when I was, you know, young child and maybe not a young child. Wish I was anyway, student, a student.

And but, you know, seeing those images of the universe and just literally gasping and wondering why. We designed Roman to tell us why. Man, I don't know that there is a better way to end this news conference. Unfortunately, that is all the time that we have for questions today. Again, NASA and SpaceX are targeting tomorrow.

7:26 a. m. for the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from launch 39 a right here at Kennedy Space Center and the launch conference. Excuse me. The launch coverage is set to begin at 6:20 a.

m.. For more information on this mission, if this tweeter interests a little bit and now you need to know even more, please visit NASAs. Coming up here very quickly. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman will be taking a final look at this mission on the pad before liftoff tomorrow. Starting, you'll see a series of several flybys by the pad today.

And that's. Administrator Jared Isaacman will be leading a formation of three fives at about 1145. For those of you who are joining us virtually. We invite you to stay on watch for a little bit, hang out in and view that into those of you who are sitting in the room with us, we invite you to be dismissed, to go sit up and to see that in person. Thank you so much.

And go, Roman, go rowing.

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