NASA Finishes Building Core of Roman Space Telescope

NASA doesn’t plan to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope until 2027, but a core component of the telescope is now complete. The team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center reports that the spacecraft bus is complete after years of construction and testing. This milestone will allow engineers to begin assembling the telescope in its final configuration with science instruments and the telescope itself attached to the bus.

The hexagonal spacecraft bus is about 13 feet (4 meters) wide by 6.5 feet (2 meters) tall. It tips the scales at 8,400 pounds (3,800 kilograms), and while that sounds like a lot, it’ll weigh a lot more later. The bus is mostly hollow right now, with a super-thin metallic honeycomb for added structural strength. Technicians have tested all the components separately, and the Goddard team has now put the complete spacecraft bus through its paces.

This assembly will eventually host communication, power, and propulsion systems connected by 45 miles of cabling. In short, the spacecraft bus is responsible for getting the Roman Telescope in position on the far side of the moon and maintaining functionality once it’s there. “They call it a spacecraft bus for a reason — it gets the telescope to where it needs to be in space,” said Roman deputy project manager Jackie Townsend. “But it’s really more like an RV because it has a whole assortment of functions that enable Roman to accomplish its scientific goals while out there too.”

Upon completion, the Roman Telescope will head into space and take up residence at the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point. That’s also where NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope operates, but Roman won’t have the same capabilities as Webb—it’s a more modest telescope but still vital to the future of astronomy.

Credit: NASA

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a 2.4-meter mirror, just like Hubble, but the primary Wide-Field Instrument will be an impressive 300.8-megapixel camera that can operate in the visible and near-infrared range. NASA projects that Roman’s high-resolution sensor will send back about 1.4TB of data every day, compared with 50-60GB for Webb and a mere 3GB for Hubble.

NASA is hopeful the project can hit its projected launch date, even if there are further delays. The spacecraft bus has been designed to be modular. Components don’t need to be installed in any particular order because none of them are buried deep in the frame. Townsend compares it to a Trivial Pursuit game piece.

The plan is to begin installing and integrating systems and instruments next year. NASA has secured a Falcon Heavy launch from SpaceX to get the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to the Moon with a target date of May 2027.