NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will combine a Hubble-like sharpness with a panoramic view of the infrared sky. But as Richard de Grijs explains, the mission’s biggest impact could be in how it changes the practice of astronomy itself

Lift off A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on board is seen transiting the Sun during launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 30 August 2026. Named after the agency’s first chief astronomer, the telescope will survey billions of stars and galaxies with a field of view far larger than Hubble’s, helping scientists to study dark energy, exoplanets and the evolution of the universe.…