NASA chooses Falcon Heavy to launch the Roman Space Telescope - SpaceNews

WASHINGTON — NASA has selected SpaceX to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope with Falcon Heavy, but at a much higher price than the agency’s previous contract.

NASA announced July 19 that it awarded SpaceX a contract to launch Roman on the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket in October 2026 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The contract is worth $255 million for launch and other mission-related costs.

Roman is the next major astrophysics mission after the James Webb Space Telescope. The spacecraft has a 2.4-meter main mirror, donated to NASA a decade ago by the National Reconnaissance Office, with wide-field instruments and a coronagraph to conduct research in cosmology, exoplanets, and general astrophysics.

The spacecraft with a mass of about 4,200 kilograms will operate from the Earth-sun Lagrange L-2 point, a space region about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth in the direction away from the sun. It is the same location that JWST and several other astrophysical missions operate.

The value of the launch contract is much higher than previous NASA awards for the Falcon Heavy mission. NASA awarded SpaceX a contract a year ago to launch the Falcon Heavy from its Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter in 2024 for $178 million. The September 2021 contract for the launch of the GOES-U Falcon Heavy weather satellite, also in 2024, is worth $152.5 million.

SpaceX is offering the Falcon Heavy for a commercial list price of $97 million. The company raised that price earlier this year from $90 million, citing “excessive inflation.”

SpaceX may have no competition for the Roman launch. Tory Bruno, chief executive of the United Launch Alliance, tweeted in February that his company did not bid on the launch. His company’s Vulcan Centaur hasn’t made its first launch yet. Blue Origin’s New Glenn hasn’t launched either.

Roman is NASA’s primary mission not only for science but also program management. Previously called the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), the mission is the top priority flagship mission of the 2010 astrophysics decade survey. The most recent decade survey, published in November 2021, concluded Roman “remains strong and necessary to achieve the scientific goals” set out in previous surveys.

Despite initial challenges and several agency budget proposals seeking to halt the mission, Roman continued development. However, last year, the mission suffered a seven-month launch delay and a $382 million cost increase that the agency blamed on the effects of the pandemic. The mission now has a total life cycle cost of $4.32 billion.

A Government Accountability Office assessment of the major NASA program published in June warned of the potential for further delays at Roman, citing problems with the spacecraft’s main mirror assembly and restraint release actuator.

Keeping Roman on schedule and on budget was critical, agency officials said, to build confidence that he could manage a large science mission after significant costs and schedules with JWST. Only then, they argue, will NASA be able to catch up with large space telescopes like those supported by recent astrophysic decadal surveys, such as the six-meter space telescope for observations in optical, ultraviolet, and infrared wavelengths.

“Number one on the priority list is ensuring that the Roman Space Telescope is delivered within our cost and schedule commitments,” Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in June.

“Unless NASA can show that we have learned lessons from mistakes made in managing the James Webb Space Telescope program and we can show that we can apply those lessons to other large observatories that are very expensive and very difficult, such as Nancy Grace. The Roman Space Telescope, no one will take us seriously,” he argued.

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