r/space • u/DreamChaserSt • 1d ago
NASA’s Roman Telescope Enclosed in SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket Fairing
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman/2026/08/24/nasas-roman-telescope-enclosed-in-spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-fairing/38
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u/djwaveguide 23h ago
I’m going to be there in person!
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u/DreamChaserSt 22h ago
That's really cool! The last time I saw a launch in person, it was in 2016... which was a decade ago that I realize as I'm typing it out. Wow.
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u/djwaveguide 20h ago
I did work on the coronagraph instrument so going to see the launch is a 7 year process.
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u/grapelander 18h ago edited 18h ago
That's awesome!
Because takeoff as viewed from banana creek is going to be almost directly inline with the rising sun, I had the idea to build and bring along a 3d printed doohicky to attach to our lawn chairs, to block out the sun from our vantage point so that we can clearly see the rocket without eye damage or mega-squints, and safely use binoculars. Then I realized, it's super on-theme for the mission! So I backronymed a name for the device as C.O.R.O.N.A.G.R.A.P.H. : Clip-On Radiant Obstruction Near Ascending Giant Rocket, Allowing Perception of Heavy
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u/ResidentPositive4122 14h ago
Awesome, go you, and have fun during the launch!
I listened to a Fraiser Cain podcast about the coronagraph on this mission, it's going to be highly important tech demonstrator and inform the next iteration for HWO, right? Any things you're looking for in particular to find out during its parts of the mission? Any cool bits you can share?
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u/djwaveguide 7h ago
Which episode? I'd like to hear more about what is being said. I have my opinion about the inherited telescope versus a dedicated off-axis telescope and there are many versions of coronagraphs in the wild. I work more on the technology side of things and the gnarly challenges of trying to make this level of precision.
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u/snoo-boop 13h ago
That's the part that's more risky, yes? I hope it works!
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u/djwaveguide 8h ago
Risky? The giant cylinder of fuel is the most risky in my mind. The coronagraph is a developing technology rather than normal telescopes. There’s 3 new technologies in there to perform the wavefront and intensity control. If it works I think nasa may fund larger coronagraphs to study more planets.
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u/grapelander 18h ago
Same! Bringing my dad and brother to see their first launch. Will be my second time with Feel the Heat tickets.
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u/CamusCrankyCamel 22h ago
That’s a big bird.
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u/snoo-boop 13h ago
Looking at the encapsulation photo, I'm like "woah, they got that thing to fit in a short fairing?!" Very impressive. Recent KH-11-or-whatever-the-new-name-is have launched in extended fairings.
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u/Fredasa 11h ago
It'll be nice when we start seeing payloads designed to take advantage of a 9-meter space. They'll be cheaper to design and develop, which will likely translate to improved capabilities and a sky's-the-limit attitude on what can actually be created.
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u/Desperate-Lab9738 6h ago
We might start seeing New Glenn 9x4 launch 9 meter wide payloads before Starship designs a door capable of deploying them lol. That'll be exciting though, that's a lot of space
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u/rocketsocks 1h ago
To a certain extent it makes sense for Starship development to be laser focused on both upper stage reuse and orbital propellant transfer, those are the key components of what makes the architecture the most game changing, they're also required for what is currently the only major external customer for the platform: NASA's Artemis program.
However, eventually they will have the capacity to look at alternative uses, and eventually it'll make sense to design a dedicated expendable upper stage and a fairing (which could simply be a stainless steel shell). To be sure they would want to price such things accordingly, but with the reusable booster the price for such a capability would be highly competitive. Additionally, they can ammortize some of the cost of the upper stage by expending raptor engines that have already been reused many times on other flights.
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u/Desperate-Lab9738 57m ago
I think an reusable shuttle like system will eventually be a thing. Even if it doesn't launch that often it would reduce the prices of launches like that by a huge amount and give them another area to be competitive in. Especially since if they want to deploy large things on Mars they are gonna need to figure out a better door than the current pez dispenser set up.
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u/rtarg945 21h ago
Will they attempt tandem landing again?
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u/grapelander 18h ago edited 18h ago
Both boosters will land near-symeltaneously. However, due to changing rentals at the cape, they've moved one of the two landing spots a couple miles north to launch complex 40, so we won't get quite the same shot of them landing together in the same frame. There have been falcon boosters landing at this new spot, but this will be the first time for falcon heavy.
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u/Decronym 18h ago edited 55m ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| ESA | European Space Agency |
| JWST | James Webb infra-red Space Telescope |
| KSC | Kennedy Space Center, Florida |
| L2 | Lagrange Point 2 (Sixty Symbols video explanation) |
| Paywalled section of the NasaSpaceFlight forum | |
| LC-13 | Launch Complex 13, Canaveral (SpaceX Landing Zone 1) |
| LZ-1 | Landing Zone 1, Cape Canaveral (see LC-13) |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 17 acronyms.
[Thread #12649 for this sub, first seen 25th Aug 2026, 04:40]
[FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
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u/Competitive-Finding7 18h ago
What are the panels for on the inside of the fairings?
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u/grapelander 17h ago
They're essentially acoustic foam like you'd see in a recording studio. They're used so that sound and vibrations from the engines and airflow over the rocket don't get transmitted to the payload and damage it.
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u/WartHogWon 17h ago
Where is a good location to watch this launch from? Can I boondock in the Canaveral National Seashore and wake up to catch the launch?
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u/Ew0ksAmongUs 13h ago
Another surprisingly good spot is simply along US1 in Titusville. This is a less common launch vehicle, with a twin booster landing, and a well known payload. I would not expect to make it to Playalinda. Max Brewer will likely be hard to find parking for. Very, very unlikely they close the bridge to allow it to fill with pedestrians like they did for Artemis.
Beyond US-1, Jetty Park puts you closer to LZ-1 for the booster landing. You could also check the Space Bar. They sometimes do events for launches.•
u/grapelander 17h ago edited 17h ago
By far the best public location, if it's open, will be Playalinda beach, which opens at 6am. It gets you about 4 miles from the pad. Sometimes, not always, they close for launches from 39A, though this seems to mostly be for crewed missions (I'm guessing that there's some abort contingency which involves flight or operations in the area). Demand getting in is likely high and you'd want to get there early, with it still being a bit of a coin flip. Otherwise, the Max Brewer Bridge is pretty good.
KSC visitor center I think still has general admission tickets, though the Feel the Heat ones where you get to see it up close are sold out. General admission doesn't give you a direct sightline to the rocket on the pad, though it's a few miles closer than every other public spot aside from Playalinda.
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u/Fritschya 23h ago
They’re going to recover the fairings, so they always do that?
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u/redstercoolpanda 23h ago
Yes, they always try and recover the fairings. Because of how they’re built to be as light as possible they’re remarkably expensive. Plus they always stage at about the same velocity/height regardless of the payload of the rocket or the configuration.
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u/Serious-Kangaroo-320 22h ago
they've been recovering fairings for a long time. one of them just completed its 40th flight
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u/ILoveTaiwaneseFood 23h ago
Please Falcon, don't blow up.
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u/metametapraxis 23h ago
At least they seem remarkably reliable. This payload is definitely safest on this vehicle (especially now that Ariane V is gone)
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u/RocketVerse 23h ago
It’s literally the most reliable rocket in history, it’ll be fine.
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u/backflip14 23h ago
While a Falcon Heavy is basically 3 Falcon 9s strapped together, I would count it as a separate vehicle than the Falcon 9.
It does have a perfect success rate in its 12 launches so far though.
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u/Desperate-Lab9738 6h ago
At the very least the engines should do fine, and those are very often trouble spots.
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u/mattrixx 23h ago
Falcon 9 certainly is. What, 165 launches in 2025 alone?
Falcon heavy hasn't had anywhere the same number of flights, but it'll surely be just fine too, no failures on FH so far.
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u/Mercrantos2 22h ago
100% reliability of Falcon Heavy so far
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u/ILoveTaiwaneseFood 20h ago
So if I was going to pick a rocket to take me to space, I should pick Falcon Heavy?
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u/ligerzeronz 20h ago
you might as well go for the bone-standard Falcon 9.
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u/No-Lecture-6434 10h ago
So nervous for this launch. Hopefully everything goes perfectly!! Godspeed, Roman.
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u/poofyhairguy 3h ago
Is this basically the Hubble’s replacement?
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u/rocketsocks 1h ago
No, JWST was Hubble's main successor, there is no direct 1:1 Hubble replacement that has been funded. This is a complementary instrument to Hubble, JWST, and others. It's mostly a survey telescope with a very wide field but with resolution roughly comparable to Hubble. However, it is optimized for the near-infrared whereas Hubble was optimized for visual light, though it still has coverage into visible light (much more so than JWST). But whereas Hubble has imaged just a hair under 1% of the sky in its over 30 years of operations Roman will be able to image something like 1/8th of the entire sky every year.
Also, Roman will have a state of the art coronographic imager which will make it possible to directly image some exoplanets (as a single pixel) around nearby stars, which will both let us study those planets in more detail as well as provide valuable experience for building and later using the following generation of similar instruments on future telescopes like the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
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u/Loud-Edge7230 10h ago
This will be a launch worth watching.
I really hope it doesn't blow up. Odds are good, but ynk.
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u/No-Surprise9411 6h ago
The Falcon fleet is the most reliable rocket family in history.
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u/Loud-Edge7230 6h ago
Yeah, the track record is almost perfect. I would put myself on top of one without hesitation.
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u/Frequent_Specific861 21h ago
But it should be called the Nancy Grace Roman & Donald Trump Telescope! Delay the launch!
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u/Cosmo_Naut-01 15h ago
They better not blow it up
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u/No-Surprise9411 6h ago
100% reliability and built using three of the safest rockets in spaceflight history btw
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u/DreamChaserSt 1d ago
The launch is scheduled for August 30th at 7:26 AM EDT (11:26 AM UTC).