NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space telescope has passed its critical design review meaning that all of its design and developmental engineering work is now complete. The telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, and scientists from various institutions are part of its science team.
“After seeing our extensive hardware testing and sophisticated modelling, an independent review panel has confirmed that the observatory we have designed will work,” said Julie McEnery, the Roman Space Telescope senior project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. She added, “We know what it will look like and what it will be capable of. Now that the groundwork is laid, the team is thrilled to continue building and testing the observatory they’ve envisaged.”
The scientists are hopeful that the Nancy Grace Roman Space telescope will be able to shed more light on dark energy and dark matter. Moreover, using the telescope’s vast field of view, which is 200 times larger than that of the Hubble telescope, the astronomers are hopeful that they can now observe a significant number of rocky worlds.
The astronomers are hopeful that Roman may discover an elusive set of planets, especially those that orbit far from their host star. Apart from that, Roman is also responsible for probing for new asteroids, comets, and minor planets in the outer solar system.
“With this review complete, we enter the exciting phase where we will assemble and test the Roman hardware that we plan to fly,” said Jackie Townsend, deputy project manager for the Roman Space Telescope at Goddard. “When all our flight hardware is ready in 2024, we’ll hold the System Integration Review and integrate the Roman observatory. Finally, we’ll test the whole observatory in environments that simulate launch and our orbit to make sure Roman will work as designed.”
