Technicians completed the fueling of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on July 25, loading 290 gallons of hydrazine at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Roman will travel to a planned orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, about one million miles from Earth. There, it will keep its instruments pointed and its solar panels facing the Sun.
Researchers expect the telescope to help find thousands of exoplanets and study how closely some resemble Earth. It will also investigate dark energy and why it is causing the universe to expand faster.
NASA and SpaceX are targeting a launch no earlier than August 30 aboard a Falcon Heavy. The date is a target, not a guarantee, but each completed test brings the mission closer.
