Roman Space Telescope

Wavelength Coverage

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) is under development by NASA, currently scheduled to begin operations in late-2026. Roman's near-infrared Wide Field Instrument (WFI) will offer the Hubble Space Telescope (HST)'s sensitivity and resolution (0.1 arcsec/pixel) with a panoramic field of view (0.281 deg²) roughly 200 times larger than HST. Its high-performance Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) can suppress starlight to directly image planets and disks a billion times fainter than their host stars. The CGI will be able to resolve objects with 0.15-1.5" separation.

Science with Roman will be made possible through Core Community Surveys and General Astrophysics Surveys, with funding opportunities for new observations and analysis of those survey data. The specific implementation of the Core Community Surveys will be community driven. All proposed programs for new observing time and associated funding will be competed and selected through peer review. Read more about Roman's science themes, surveys, and programs in Science and Technical Overview.

Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) serves as the Roman Science Operations Center (SOC), responsible for the mission's observation scheduling system, data processing, and high-level science products of WFI imaging mode observations in collaboration with the mission and community science teams. All cloud-hosted Roman data will be immediately available to the public without exclusive access via the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescope (MAST).

Planned Launch

Late 2026

Resolution 

• Imaging mode
  • WFI: angular resolution of 0.1 arcsec/pixel
  • CGI:  starlight suppression of ~ 10⁹  (a flux ratio) and ability to resolve objects with 0.15-1.5 arcsec separation
• Spectroscopy mode
  • Spectral resolving power R (= λ/Δλ) ~ 47-460 over varying wavelength ranges, instruments, and observing modes

Capabilities 

• Imaging with eight broad-band filters
• Grism Spectroscopy
• Prism Spectroscopy
• Coronagraphy (high-contrast imaging)