Gallery
Images from Roman
One so far, and it is unfocused. Sharp images follow alignment and calibration. Below it, the photographs of how the observatory got here.
Mission images · 1
First photons: the Wide Field Instrument's first test image
An engineering exposure, not a picture: the detector array was still stowed in its launch position and the telescope unfocused, so every star is a blur thousands of pixels wide. It is the baseline the team aligns and focuses against.
- Taken
- 15 Sept 2026
- Credit
- NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / Tyler Desjardins (STScI)
- Source
- science.nasa.gov
Next: first science images
Sharp images follow alignment, focus and calibration. What has happened, and what is next.
Early 2027
NASA's guidance
Get an email when Roman's first science images are released
NASA expects them by early 2027. One email then, one when survey data starts flowing. Nothing else.
Before first light
The road so far
281 NASA photographs · updated daily
- 01
Dr. Nancy Grace Roman
31 Mar 20177 photosNASA's first chief astronomer, at Goddard in 2017 with the telescope that preceded hers.
- 02
Coronagraph, at JPL
2022–202410 photosThe technology-demonstration instrument built in Pasadena, 2022–2024.
- 03
Integration at Goddard
21 Apr – 02 Jul 20253 photosTelescope, instruments and spacecraft bus brought together in the Greenbelt clean room, 2025.
- 04
Arrival at Kennedy
21 Jun 202626 photosOff the Pegasus barge and into the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, June 21.
- 05
Final preparation
25 Jun – 07 Aug 202645 photosFueling, solar-array cleaning, the names plaque, and mating to the payload adapter, June–August.
- 06
Encapsulation
19 Aug – 24 Aug 202614 photosSealed inside the Falcon Heavy fairing, August 19–24.
- 07
To the pad
24 Aug – 29 Aug 202626 photosAcross Kennedy to Launch Complex 39A, mated to the rocket, and raised vertical, August 24–29.
- 08
Launch
29 Aug – 30 Aug 2026116 photosFalcon Heavy from LC-39A, August 30, 2026.
- 09
Two days later, at Goddard
01 Sept 202634 photosSeptember 1: the administrator with the teams in the Roman operations centers, and a coffee-and-donuts thank-you.
NASA has not published a date for the first science images. Survey images appear here as MAST publishes them.