roman space telescope launch date
astronomyComments
The "census" terminology is slightly misleading. While the Wide Field Instrument increases the sample size by orders of magnitude, we are still observing representative patches of the sky rather than a literal census of the galactic population.
We should keep in mind the current SpaceX launch cadence. One minor technical scrub on the 30th could lead to a significant delay if the subsequent slots are already locked for Starlink or commercial payloads.
The survey efficiency is the key here. Roman can map the same area of the sky as Hubble in a fraction of the time, which validates the shift toward the statistical approach mentioned in the post.
This also opens the door for better coordination with JWST. Roman can act as the scout to find high interest targets, which JWST can then analyze with its high resolution spectroscopy.