NASA fuels its next-gen Roman Space Telescope for August launch

Technicians in clean suits in a hangar next to a large rectangular spacecraft wrapped in metallic foil.

NASA announced on Tuesday (July 28) that it has officially fueled-up the Roman Space Telescope — a magnificent new observatory expected to generate over 500 terabytes of cosmic data per year. By comparison, the Hubble Space Telescope, in its 35 years of service, has created over 400 terabytes in total.

At present, the Roman Space Telescope's launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled to occur on Aug. 30 at 7:26 a.m. EDT (1126 GMT). And considering the project is sort of the gold-standard for telescope-building, as the team says it's nine months ahead of schedule and under budget, hopes are high that this launch date will stick.