NASA's Roman Space Telescope Is Ready to Fly — Nine Months Early

Today's episode — S05E176, Tuesday August 25, 2026:Feature story: NASA's Roman Space Telescope is fully encapsulated inside its Falcon Heavy fairing and cleared to launch no earlier than 7:26 a.m. ET this Sunday, August 30 — about nine months ahead of its original schedule, a rarity for a NASA flagship mission. Roman is headed to Sun-Earth L2 for a five-year mission mapping dark energy and dark matter and hunting exoplanets with a starlight-cancelling coronagraph. Its wide-field camera surveys roughly a hundred times faster than Hubble at comparable image sharpness. Named for NASA's first chief astronomer, Nancy Grace Roman — the "mother of Hubble" — the mission is a formal ESA partnership; some of its data will come down through a new ESA antenna at New Norcia, Western Australia.The rest of the news:ISS Spacewalk 98: NASA's Anil Menon and ESA's Sophie Adenot are outside the station today finishing a Space-to-Ground antenna replacement and, time permitting, installing a new docking retroreflector — their third spacewalk together in under a month.Milky Way merger scar: A Hubble-based study (the ARMA project, led by Davide Massari) has found evidence of a ~500-million-solar-mass dwarf galaxy, dubbed Low-energy-Kraken-Heracles, absorbed by the Milky Way roughly 12 billion years ago — the earliest documented merger in our galaxy's history.Perseids 2028 watch: Jupiter's gravity may nudge Perseid debris closer to Earth's path in 2028, potentially producing an outburst of 200-300 meteors/hour under favorable dark-sky conditions — though modelers caution the forecast is an "educated guess."Tonight's Sky: A 96%-partial lunar eclipse falls the night of August 27-28 — spectacular from the Americas and parts of Europe/Africa, but invisible from Australia and the rest of Asia-Pacific, where it happens in broad daylight. Venus and Saturn remain good evening targets locally in the meantime.Links & sources:NASA Science — Roman Launch CountdownNASA Roman Blog — Roman Telescope Enclosed in Falcon Heavy FairingSpace.com — The Roman Space Telescope is ready to launch Aug. 30JPL — NASA Telescope Named for "Mother of Hubble" Nancy Grace RomanESA — Roman factsheetNASA — NASA to Cover Three US SpacewalksSpace.com — The earliest galaxy "swallowed" by the cannibal Milky Way left a scar at its heartSpace.com — Could Jupiter supercharge the Perseids in 2028?Space.com — Partial lunar eclipse Aug. 27-28: stages and visibilityFollow us: @AstronomyDailyPodBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/astronomy-daily-latest-space-news--5648921/support.Sponsor Details:Ensure your online privacy by using NordVPN. To get our special listener deal and save a lot of money, visit www.astronomydaily.io/nordvpn. You'll be glad you did!Get the best secure and private email on the planet. Stop your Government, google and who knows who else spying on every email you write. Do what we did and use ProtonMail. They beleive in privacy and there are no ads in their business model...yet they still provide a free forever service. Check them out and get out special deal at www.astronomydaily.io/protonmailBecome a supporter of Astronomy Daily by joining our Supporters Club. Commercial free episodes daily are only a click way... Click HereThis episode includes AI-generated content.