NASA’s Roman Telescope to Carry 1.35 Million Names to Deep Space

Technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center recently finished the installation of a commemorative memory card on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This device carries the names of 1,350,144 individuals from across the globe, including those of astronauts currently assigned to the Artemis II and Artemis III missions.

The hardware is now part of a physical plaque attached to the observatory. This telescope is scheduled to travel to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, located approximately one million miles from Earth. At this position, the gravitational forces of the Sun and Earth remain in balance, providing a stable environment for the craft to conduct its observations.

The mission honors Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, who served as NASA’s first chief astronomer. She was a key architect of the modern science program and worked to ensure that space-based observatories could provide data to the scientific community without the interference of Earth’s atmosphere.

Preparations for the mission continue at the Florida spaceport. NASA and SpaceX are currently targeting a launch date no earlier than Sunday, August 30. The spacecraft will depart aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A.