spacetoday.net: Falcon Heavy to launch NASA's Roman Space Telescope

Falcon Heavy to launch NASA's Roman Space Telescope

Posted: Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 10:01 AM ET (1401 GMT)

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope illus. (NASA)

NASA awarded a contract to SpaceX Tuesday for the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. NASA announced SpaceX will launch the mission on its Falcon Heavy rocket in October 2026, a contract worth $255 million. That is significantly more than many other Falcon Heavy contracts, such as the Europa Clipper mission; the commercial list price of the Falcon Heavy is less than $100 million. With a total cost of $4.3 billion, Roman features a 2.4-meter telescope with a wide-field instrument and coronagraph to perform research in fields ranging from cosmology to exoplanets.