Roman Space Telescope and Artemis III SLS Core Stage Weather Cover Arrive at KSC

NASA’s Pegasus barge carrying the agency’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope seen in the background of this photograph, and a weather cover for the Artemis III SLS (Space Launch System) rocket core stage in the foreground, arrives Sunday, June 21, 2026, at the Launch Complex 39 turn basin wharf at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The cover will protect the stage’s thermal systems while SLS sits atop the mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B in its short stack configuration. Named for NASA’s first chief astronomer and “mother of the Hubble Space Telescope,” Roman will offer a field of view over 100 times larger than Hubble’s to study up to a billion galaxies, directly image exoplanets and planet forming disks, and address fundamental questions about dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. NASA will send four Artemis astronauts on increasingly difficult missions to explore more of the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, establish an enduring human presence on the lunar surface, and to build on our foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.