Nancy Grace Roman

   On Sunday August 30th at 7:26AM, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

   On it was the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. NASA’s newest flagship telescope. With a 2.4m primary mirror, and two scientific instruments. The first being the Wide-Field Instrument (WFI) which is a 300.8-megapixel near-infrared camera, providing images comparable to the Hubble Space Telescope. Roman also has over a 0.28 square degree field of view, 100 times larger than the cameras on Hubble. The Coronagraphic Instrument (CGI) is a small field of view camera and spectrometer covering the visible and near-infrared wavelengths. Roman’s objectives include a search for exoplanets using gravitational microlensing, the search for dark matter and dark energy, and the expansion of the universe.

   I was extremely fortunate to attend this launch at the KSC Press Site. As close as the public was able to get for this launch. It was so surreal being at such a historic place and for an amazing launch. The VAB was in touching distance. It was also my second falcon heavy launch that i’ve watched from the Cape.

   The launch was so loud and shook the ground violently. The sonic booms from the boosters were very interesting. Since one was at LZ-40 and the other at LZ-2, you could tell the difference between what booster it came from. The LZ-40 one was first and scared me so much. and about a minute later the other sonic booms reached us. It was a little quieter than the 40 one but still very loud.

   I also got the opportunity to go to the post flight press conference a few hours after launch. Where President Trump famously called the Administrator midway through. I even got to ask a question!

   After the press conference, I asked Jared if I could go out with them to the Shuttle Landing Facility. He immediately said yes and directed me to John Kraus. We exchanged information and he told me to wait for his call. After about an hour I was driving myself over to the famous landing facility.

   NASA was doing incentive flights with congressman on the Freedom 250 F-5’s. I was out there for about 5 hours. The hospitality was fantastic. And i’m so grateful that I could be trusted to be there with them.

   I would like to give a massive thank you to the MaxQ team!