- NASA's newest crown jewel blasted off Sunday to hunt for planets around other stars, explore secret dark energy and survey the cosmos like never before.

SpaceX launched the $4. 3 billion Roman Space Telescope shortly after daybreak aboard a triple-the-fire-power Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center.

Roman blazed toward an observation point 1 million miles (1. 6 million kilometers) away that's home to the Webb Space Telescope, one of NASA's other big-ticket eyes in the sky.