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The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in the clean room at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on June 26, 2026. (Image credit: NASA/Sydney Rohde (Rocz)) NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is hanging out in the clean room at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida, preparing for its epic journey to space.

What is it?

Roman is NASA's next big flagship mission, designed to explore the universe like we've never seen it before. And with just over a month and a half until its expected launch on Aug. 30, it is in the home stretch to liftoff.

After recently leaving NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, where the telescope was assembled and tested, Roman made its way to KSC, from where it will launch. In this new photo, snapped on June 26, we can see Roman seemingly floating in mid-air, hanging inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, a secure clean room at KSC where spacecraft are fueled, tested and otherwise prepared for flight. In this moment, technicians and engineers were using a crane to lift Roman into the air into a specialized stand, where the telescope can rest while it is worked on.

Why is it incredible?

Roman — named for the pioneering astronomer Nancy Grace Roman, who served as NASA's first chief of astronomy and expanded our understanding of the universe — is a mission that scientists have been waiting for for a long time.

With a field of view at least 100 times larger than the iconic Hubble Space Telescope , Roman will be able to capture immense views across the universe. The mission will explore dark matter and dark energy , and with its tech demonstration the Roman Coronagraph Instrument, it will snap images of exoplanets, offering direct looks at worlds far from our solar system.

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Xbox's latest wave of mass layoffs has been far-reaching across the company and has even impacted one 37-year Microsoft veteran who served as lead of the Xbox Backward Compatibility program for Xbox 360 games on Xbox One.

Kevin LaChappelle, who joined Microsoft in August 1989 and most recently (in 2023) became vice president of Xbox platform, has taken to LinkedIn to confirm that he was part of the 1,600 roles eliminated this week (itself only half of the planned total of 3,200 layoffs that'll be rolling out across the 2027 fiscal year).

"I will add my name to the list of people who were laid off today at Xbox," LaChappelle's post reads. "This ends my 37 years at Microsoft."

Although LaChappelle, by his own description, has "worked in many different parts of the company," he says his "fondest memories are of leading the team of very talented engineers who built the Xbox Backward Compatibility program. Sitting in the auditorium when Phil [Spencer, former Xbox boss] announced the program at E3 2015 was incredible. The audience's reaction was unbelievable."

He's not exaggerating – you can watch the moment that the crowd erupted with excitement in the video below. As Spencer said at the time, the feature had "been consistently at the top" of fans' "request list," but Xbox hadn't even been sure "it was possible." Lo and behold, though, the team led by LaChappelle pulled it off.

This wasn't LaChappelle's only contribution to Xbox, as he also went on to lead "the team who created our Cloud Gaming product."

Going forward, LaChappelle says, "I am a firm believer that all entertainment will eventually become streamed to you wherever you are. I look forward to watching how Xbox evolves going forward and I wish the team nothing but success."

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says "a healthy Xbox could weather" the current storm, but Microsoft's gaming brand is anything but: "Our core has to be healthy."