NASA launches $4.3 billion Roman Space Telescope—20 billion stars, 2 billion galaxies, and the secrets of the universe await

NASA’s $4.3 billion Roman Space Telescope lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket Sunday morning from Kennedy Space Center, beginning a three-month, one-million-mile journey to its permanent observation post in deep space, CBS News reported.

Equipped with a 300-megapixel wide-field camera and an experimental coronagraph capable of analysing the atmospheres of Jupiter-sized planets, Roman will probe the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter—the invisible forces that simultaneously hold and expand the universe.

NASA science chief Nicky Fox called it a mission that will “revolutionize the way we look at our universe.” Roman is expected to catalogue 20 billion stars, two billion galaxies, and push the known exoplanet count beyond 100,000.