Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: what makes it different and better than Hubble?

By Mike Kiniry

Published September 14, 2026 at 11:21 AM EDT

NASA launched the new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center on Aug. 30 — culminating a roughly 27-year arc from its conception to it finally leaving the planet Earth on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Nancy Grace Roman was an American astronomer who is known as the "Mother of Hubble" for her central role in planning, championing, and securing funding for the Hubble Space Telescope which has been in space since 1990. Grace Roman was NASA's first Chief of Astronomy, and she was the first woman to hold an executive leadership role at the agency.

It will take about three months for the telescope bearing her name to reach its destination roughly 930,000 miles from Earth in a spot known as the L2 Lagrange Point. That's a specific location in space where the gravities of the Sun, the Earth, and our Moon intersect, making it possible for something like a space telescope to remain relatively fixed in one place.

This image of the Eagle Nebula showcases the superb resolution and wide field of view of NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It begins with a Hubble image of the famous Pillars of Creation superimposed on a ground-based image. The view then zooms out to show the full field of view of Roman’s Wide Field Instrument. Roman’s images will have the resolution of Hubble while covering an area about 100 times larger in a single pointing. L. Hustak (STScI) — This image of the Eagle Nebula showcases the superb resolution and wide field of view of NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It begins with a Hubble image of the famous Pillars of Creation superimposed on a ground-based image. The view then zooms out to show the full field of view of Roman’s Wide Field Instrument. Roman’s images will have the resolution of Hubble while covering an area about 100 times larger in a single pointing.
L. Hustak (STScI)

This new telescope's field of view will be about 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope. Its initial primary five-year mission will focus on finding and understanding exoplanets (planets around other stars), doing astrophysics (studying other stars and how they behave), and mapping our galaxy to hopefully get a better handle on both Dark Matter and Dark Energy, which together apparently make up most of the universe even though neither can be directly measured...yet.

We talk with a space reporter, and an astronomer who works with space telescopes and used to be an FGCU faculty member to learn what makes Roman different, and what scientists have planned for it once it starts sending data back to Earth.

Guests:
Brendan Byrne, Assistant News Director at Central Florida Public Media and host of Are We There Yet
Dr. Derek Buzasi, Senior Instructional Professor and Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at University of Chicago

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