'A giant leap forward': Nasa launches powerful new space telescope

Nasa's powerful next-generation telescope has blasted off into space from its launchpad in Florida, with a mission to explore dark energy, black holes and other mysteries of the Universe.

The Nancy Grace Roman telescope will capture vast panoramic views of space, with a field of vision 100 times larger than both the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, Nasa says.

The mission begins with a 100-day journey to a vantage point roughly one million miles from Earth, where the telescope will then start charting planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets.

"Roman is going to change the way we look at the Universe," said Nicky Fox, a Nasa administrator.

The successful launch of the telescope took place on Sunday morning local time from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Jackie Townsend, a project manager on Nasa's Roman telescope, described it as "glorious" at a news conference afterwards. "The ride was magnificent. It put us right where we wanted to be."

About 30 minutes after launch, Roman separated from its SpaceX rocket and is now heading towards its orbiting point around a million miles away.

Fox said Roman "is going to discover tens of thousands, maybe even 100,000 new exoplanets" - referring to planets located outside of our solar system.