![\"Nancy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/JANASAROMAN0522260592-50ad54.jpg\")
NASA employees and guests overlook the Nancy Grace Roman telescope in the clean room.Jason Andrew for NBC News<\/p>\nUnlike many other flagship NASA missions, the Roman telescope came in under budget and ahead of schedule \u2014 a feat that wasn\u2019t easy, Benford said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a huge focus of my professional life to get this observatory into operation in space, and for many years it really felt like it was a constant struggle to do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The project weathered major interruptions, including the Covid pandemic and the two longest government shutdowns in U.S. history (this year\u2019s and last year\u2019s). Originally, NASA had aimed to launch the Roman telescope no later than May 2027.<\/p>\n
The observatory is slated to lift off atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. After that, Benford said, the Roman telescope will journey for more than three months to its destination in space. Once it arrives, mission controllers will spend time testing the observatory\u2019s instruments before scientific observations can begin. <\/p>\n
NASA employees and guests overlook the Nancy Grace Roman telescope in the clean room.Jason Andrew for NBC News<\/p>\n
If all goes according to plan, Benford said the telescope\u2019s first images could be released by the end of this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could be around Christmas, so hopefully that\u2019s a nice present,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
NASA does not have another major space telescope in the pipeline. The agency has proposed a mission called the Habitable Worlds Observatory to search for signs of life on exoplanets, but even if that project moves forward, it would not launch until the 2040s.<\/p>\n
As such, the Roman telescope\u2019s launch is particularly meaningful to Goddard\u2019s workforce, some of whom also worked on Hubble and Webb.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrilled just seems insufficient \u2014 I\u2019ve spent half my career on this,\u201d said Mark Melton, a mission systems engineer. He anticipates he will tear up when the telescope is finally deployed. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was paper. And now it\u2019s reality,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlike many other flagship NASA missions, the Roman telescope came in under budget and ahead of schedule \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-739222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}