Roman Mission Dress Rehearsal, Hangar X and AE

Jackie Townsend, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope project manager, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, participates in a mission dress rehearsal for Roman on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, inside Hangar AE at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Teams ran through a full end-to-end simulation of every major step they will experience on launch day except liftoff, including powering up the spacecraft, fueling the rocket, conducting weather briefings, and other operations.