Jon Edwards(@edwards345):We successfully launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope today about 9 months ahead of its formal readiness date. Today’s Falcon Heavy mission was what we call a RXR mission (return-expendable-return), which signifies that the side boosters are to be recovered by returning to the launch site. The center core had to be expended today in order to achieve the proper delta-v for the 10 ton telescope to reach L2 - the second Sun–Earth Lagrange point, a spot in space about 1.5 million km from Earth on the far side of our planet from the Sun.

2026.08.30 21:52

We successfully launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope today about 9 months ahead of its formal readiness date. Today’s Falcon Heavy mission was what we call a RXR mission (return-expendable-return), which signifies that the side boosters are to be recovered by returning to the launch site. The center core had to be expended today in order to achieve the proper delta-v for the 10 ton telescope to reach L2 - the second Sun–Earth Lagrange point, a spot in space about 1.5 million km from Earth on the far side of our planet from the Sun.

SpaceX@SpaceX

2026.08.30 15:16

Falcon Heavy launches @NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from pad 39A in Florida, beginning its more than three-month journey to its destination where it will generate never-before-seen photos of the universe