Your name can travel aboard NASA's Roman Telescope on its journey—get your boarding pass now

Astronomy enthusiasts can send their names to the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point (L2), one million miles away, all thanks to NASA and the brand-new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The submitted names will be uploaded to an SD card that will be attached to the observatory before launch. Each person who registers will also get an official digital boarding pass as a keepsake.

The Roman Telescope was previously supposed to launch in early September this year. NASA, however, decided to bring up the launch date to August 30 after the successful completion of the final inspection of its 7.9-foot mirror at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman took to X to acknowledge the revised launch date, stating that the mission is both "under budget AND ahead of schedule." This leaves just a few weeks for interested folks to enter their names and download their passes before a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off with the observatory from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Step-by-step guide to securing your very own Roman Telescope boarding pass

1) Visit the NASA Special Events portal

2) Enter your first name and last name

3) Add your email address and click 'Submit' to generate the boarding pass

The highly capable space telescope is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer, who passed away in 2018. The space telescope is engineered to scan vast portions of the sky in infrared vision to investigate dark matter, dark energy, and the fundamental structure of our universe. It can, in fact, survey the sky more than 1,000 times faster than the Hubble Space Telescope and can capture 200 times more area in a single image.

At L2, Roman will share its orbit with another one of its predecessors—the James Webb Space Telescope. The observatory will be able to maintain a stable orbit at L2 as the gravitational forces between the Sun and Earth are balanced there. It will be able to do so without spending too much fuel while also having access to a constant, unobstructed view of the sky. 

The campaign to have names sent on missions and make boarding passes available is not new, with NASA having done something similar to raise public engagement before the Artemis II mission as well. It was quite successful in its purpose, with more than 5.6 million people choosing to have their names voyage beyond the Moon and back on a journey spanning over 250,000 miles.

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