NASA Gives Its Ultraviolet Sky Telescope a Launch Date and a Budget
NASA has committed to launching its UVEX space telescope by January 2031 and to a total cost of $590 million over the mission's life. The agency said Oct. 27, 2026, that officials confirmed the mission after it completed a technical and programmatic review known as Key Decision Point C. Both commitments follow from the project's passing that review.
NASA says UVEX, short for UltraViolet EXplorer, is designed to survey ultraviolet light across the entire sky and will offer new insight into how galaxies and stars evolve. The agency says the telescope will also be able to point quickly at sources of ultraviolet light, catching the explosions that follow a burst of gravitational waves. Those gravitational waves are the ripples in space thrown off when two neutron stars merge.
NASA selected UVEX for development in 2024 as a Medium-Class Explorer mission. The agency says the all-sky survey will work alongside other wide surveys, including its Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, to build a map of the universe that spans different wavelengths of light.
The mission's principal investigator is Fiona Harrison at Caltech in Pasadena, California. NASA lists the University of California at Berkeley, its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Northrop Grumman and the Space Dynamics Laboratory among the other institutions involved in UVEX.
