What's next for Roman Space Telescope? Here's how NASA's flagship observatory will open up the universe

NASA's next big space telescope has left Earth, but it's not ready to start observing the heavens just yet.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched yesterday (Aug.

30), riding a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket into the heavens .

Astronomers are very excited about Roman, for it's expected to discover thousands of new exoplanets and shed light on mysterious dark energy and dark matter, among other accomplishments.

Such science work is a few months off, however.

Here's a brief rundown of the next steps for the Roman team.

A diagram showing Roman at Lagrange point 2, between Earth and Mars. (Image credit: NASA SVS) A long journey The first order of business is getting Roman to its destination.

The 42-foot-long (12.7 meters) scope isn't staying in Earth orbit; it's headed to the sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 (L2), which lies about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet in the Marsward direction.

There are multiple reasons to target L2, which also hosts NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Europe's Euclid probe.

"At this special place in space," NASA officials wrote in a Roman explainer , "gravitational forces balance to keep objects in steady orbits with very little assistance." "Roman's barrel-like shape will help block out unwanted light from the sun, Earth and moon, and the spacecraft’s distant location will help keep the instruments cool," they added.

"The thermal stability of an observatory at L2 will provide a ten-fold improvement beyond Hubble in much of the data Roman will gather." And don't worry about Roman and JWST bumping heads; though their cosmic addresses will be the same, they won't actually share space.

"Like Webb, Roman will trace out a large orbit around the actual L2 point — much larger than the moon's orbit around Earth — and the two will easily be kept far apart," NASA wrote in a different Roman piece .

It'll take Roman about 30 days to fly out to L2 and settle into its looping orbit there.

A new round of work will then begin for the Roman team.