Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Launch Party

Illustration by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Get ready to see space like never before. On August 30, 2026 at 7:26 AM, NASA will launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Kennedy Space Center. Join us for a live launch event in the SECU Daily Planet Theater to celebrate this history-making mission! Gather inside the globe in Downtown Raleigh to learn about Roman from NASA Solar System Ambassadors and watch the NASA livestream of the launch on our 40-foot tall screen. Doors open to the Nature Research Center building at 6:50 AM. Program begins at 7:00 AM. NASA has set the launch time as no earlier than 7:26 AM. Please note that the launch may be scrubbed, but other event activities will proceed. The rest of the Museum will be closed until 10:00AM. About the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope With a field of view 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope, the Roman Space Telescope will settle essential questions about exoplanets, dark energy, and infrared astrophysics. Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, the ‘mother of the Hubble Space Telescope,’ the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will settle essential questions on dark matter, dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. Over the first five years of observations, Roman will image more than 50 times as much sky as Hubble covered in 30 years and perform surveys that would take Hubble hundreds or even thousands of years. This observatory will also be able to block starlight to directly see exoplanets and planet-forming disks, complete a statistical census of planetary systems in our galaxy, and potentially measure light from a billion galaxies in its lifetime.