Roman Space Telescope Launches August 30 With Hubble's Mirror, 100x Hubble's Field of View

NASA confirms August 30, 2026 launch for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, moving forward from an April-announced early September date. Roman carries a 2.4-meter mirror matching Hubble's aperture but achieves a field of view 100 times wider, enabling survey-speed observations across 0.28 square degrees per exposure versus Hubble's 0.003. The shift from depth to breadth allows mapping dark energy through galaxy clustering and detecting thousands of cold exoplanets via gravitational microlensing.