NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope began an approximately three-minute mid-course correction burn at 12:02 p.m. EDT Monday, the first of two planned orbit adjustments toward the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point. [1] The other, if needed, is planned later this week. Insertion at L2 is expected about 100 days after launch. Once there, Roman will need only periodic station-keeping burns roughly every 28 days. [1]

The burn is also a correction of the paper's own record. Roman launched at 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center — a flagship infrared survey mission this paper's Aug. 30 edition did not carry. [2] Goddard began receiving telemetry seven minutes after launch; the observatory separated 31 minutes in; solar panels and the lower instrument sun shade deployed an hour and 23 minutes after liftoff. [2] Communications then passed to the Deep Space Network for the million-mile cruise to L2. [2] Monday's blog is the first dated peg after that omission. NASA said Roman will survey the sky a thousand times faster than Hubble and expects first images by early 2027. [2] The launch was yesterday. The engine firing is today's news. Both belong on the record.

-- KENJI NAKAMURA, Tokyo