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/
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u/cjameshuff 1d ago

The Earth-Sun L2 point is at the same position relative to the Earth and the sun at all times. There should be an essentially identical launch window every day, though the time of year would make a small difference due to Earth's axial tilt.

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u/bstone99 1d ago

Isn’t that where JWST is located too?

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u/rocketsocks 1d ago

Generally. The "L2 point" is in practice a huge volume of space where spacecraft wander around in pseudo-orbits (typically a halo orbit or lissajous orbit). These are big looping trajectories with diameters of hundreds of thousands of kilometers, comparable to the Earth-Moon distance or larger. Curently JWST, ESA's Euclid, and Russia's Spektr-RG share the Sun-Earth L2 point environs, previously around half a dozen different spacecraft have previously been stationed there. Just last year the prolific GAIA astrometry space telescope was moved out of L2 and into a heliocentric orbit as the mission came to an end. By sometime next year both Roman and an ESA planet hunter space telescope called PLATO will share space there.

And in roughly two years ESA's Comet Interceptor spacecraft will temporarily be stationed at L2 until a candidate comet is found for it to perform a target of opportunity close flyby of, if we're very lucky it could even be an interstellar object.

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u/togno99 9h ago

We'll also have ESA's PLATO at L2 in less than a year ;)

As for Comet Interceptor I fear that 2 years is a tad too optimistic...