Roman Space Telescope launches successfully. What happens next.

NASA's latest flagship telescope is on its way to a million‑mile‑distant orbit to map the universe and hunt for distant planets. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope lifted off at 7:26 a.m. ET on Sunday from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Riding a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, the spacecraft separated from its rocket and began its space journey. Mission leaders say Roman will reshape astronomy by pairing a wide, sharp view of the universe with powerful tools to probe dark matter, dark energy, and distant exoplanets. Play our Big Guessing Game: Make your predictions now for a chance to win a new Apple Watch. Time's running out! The observatory, with a lifecycle cost of about $4.3 billion, will make its data public as soon as it's processed. And what a firehose of data it's expected to collect. Hubble gathered 172 terabytes of science data in its first 30 years; Roman will downlink about 1.4 terabytes every day, said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for science at NASA. What Roman can do in a single month to survey the Milky Way would take Hubble about 100 years. "The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a sheer powerhouse," Fox said. "It is literally a speed machine. The speed at which we'll be