Roman Space Telescope readies to outpace Hubble with a 300MP sky survey
NASA has completed assembly and testing of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a 300‑megapixel instrument with 18 4K sensors designed to image a sky patch 100 times larger than Hubble’s and observe more infrared light. It could launch as early as September 2026 on a SpaceX rocket, several months ahead of the May 2027 target, and at 42 feet tall it’s the largest telescope built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. NASA says Roman will accomplish in about a year what Hubble would take around 2,000 years, enabling deep views of hundreds of millions of stars; the project even featured a drone in the clean room to illustrate its scale.
