Math & science · August 2026

Roman Space Telescope launches

A Hubble-sized mirror with a field of view 100 times wider.

NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on a Falcon Heavy toward the Sun-Earth L2 point. Its 2.4 m mirror and 300-megapixel infrared camera will survey the sky up to 1,000 times faster than Hubble to map dark energy.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia Source

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Accelerating universe 1998
Hubble Space Telescope 1990

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Objects launched into space Latest: 4.51k per year (2025) Source: Our World in Data

Payloads in low Earth orbit Latest: 14.5k objects (2025) Source: Our World in Data