TheThis Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a massive win for science — a repurposed spy satellite turned cosmic explorer, launched by SpaceX's Falcon Heavy on a million-mile journey. Roman will study dark matter, dark energy and hunt for exoplanets, and it can survey the entire Milky Way in a month, a task that would take Hubble a century. Turning a canceled intelligence program into a two-billion-galaxy observatory is exactly the kind of innovation worth celebrating.
TheThis Roman Space Telescope launch celebration rings hollow given Trump's proposed 2026 budget axed the very mission he later took credit for funding. Meanwhile, NASA can't even keep existing assets intact — the Swift telescope is tumbling uncontrolled toward an unguided reentry after a failed $30 million rescue attempt. Cheering one launch while gutting future funding and losing current hardware is no way to run a space program.
There's a 0.1% chance that NASA will land people on Mars prior to 2030, according to the Metaculus prediction community.
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