Preparations for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope have reached another milestone, with teams completing a full mission dress rehearsal ahead of its planned launch from Florida.
The rehearsal took place on Thursday along Florida’s Space Coast. Teams carried out an end-to-end simulation of launch-day activities leading up to liftoff.
The exercise included powering up the spacecraft, simulating fueling operations for the SpaceX Falcon Heavy, conducting mock weather briefings and practising responses to different troubleshooting scenarios.
The rehearsal is a standard part of mission preparation and helps teams prepare for the unique requirements of each spacecraft. During the simulation, teams operated from NASA and SpaceX facilities at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and SpaceX facilities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. They tested their readiness across areas including communications and mission systems.
Completing the rehearsal moves the team closer to sending Roman into space to study major questions involving dark energy, planets beyond our solar system and infrared astrophysics.
Using wide-field surveys, the telescope will examine the universe’s structure, evolution and composition.
NASA and SpaceX are targeting a launch no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 30, from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy, aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy.
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