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

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Rommie Analytics

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.

Fueling of the observatory took place on Saturday (July 25) and involved pumping it up with what's known as hydrazine fuel. Hydrazine fuel is a classic sort of fuel used in NASA spacecraft as it's highly efficient; however, because its extremely toxic and unstable, there have been attempts to Read Entire Article