NASA launches the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Sunday, August 30.

Named after NASA's first chief astronomer, the Roman Space Telescope is designed to explore some of the universe's biggest mysteries, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy, while searching for thousands of new exoplanets.

With a field of view more than 100 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope, Roman will survey vast areas of the cosmos in unprecedented detail.

After launch, the observatory will travel to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), around 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, where it will begin its science mission.