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The Fascination of Technology  NASA's New Space Telescope Completed

Source: NASA 5 min Reading Time

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In our "Fascinating technology" section, we present impressive research and development projects to designers every week. Today: the development of NASA's new Nancy Grace Roman space telescope.

The Nancy Grace Roman space telescope was completed in the largest clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It is due to be launched into space in September 2026.(Image: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya / CC BY 4.0)
The Nancy Grace Roman space telescope was completed in the largest clean room at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. It is due to be launched into space in September 2026.
(Image: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya / CC BY 4.0)

More than a thousand technicians and engineers assembled the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope from millions of individual parts. It is almost 43 feet long and cost around $3.8 billion. 

Many components were manufactured and tested in parallel to save time. After completion, Roman will now undergo a series of tests before it is transported to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the summer of 2026. The space telescope is due to start its mission into space in May 2027 at the latest, but the team is aiming for a launch as early as fall 2026.

Roman uses state-of-the-art sensors that build on the many years of experience with infrared detectors in NASA's Hubble and Webb instruments. However, Roman's image area is much larger in order to capture a significantly wider field of view.

Greg Mosby, research astrophysicist at NASA Goddard

Optical Wide-Angle Detection at A New Level

The primary mirror has a diameter of 2.4 meters and is therefore the same size as the primary mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope.(Image: NASA/Chris Gunn)
The primary mirror has a diameter of 2.4 meters and is therefore the same size as the primary mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope.
(Image: NASA/Chris Gunn)

The Roman Telescope is not just another observatory in space—it is a technological paradigm shift in wide-field optical sensing. Although it uses the same optical aperture as the legendary Hubble telescope with its 8 feet primary mirror, its system design revolutionizes the way astrophysical data is generated. The newly developed Wide-Field Instrument (WFI)—an infrared camera—increases the field of view by a factor of 100—with exactly the same level of detail resolution.

The Hardware Specifications at A Glance:

Optical sensor technology: An array of 18 high-precision H4RG-10 infrared detectors forms a focal plane with over 300 megapixels.

Data throughput: Optoelectronics generates around 11 terabits of raw data per day, which is transmitted to earth at 250 to 500 Mbps.

Mechanical precision: A hexapod mechanism (Alignment Compensation Mechanism) aligns the detectors in the nm range (nanometers) to compensate for thermal deformations.

The Detectors of the Wide Field Instrument (WFI)

The detectors, each about the size of a salt cracker, have around 16.8 million tiny pixels and provide the mission with an excellent image resolution. Pictured: Lead technician Billy Keim mounts a cover plate over the space telescope's detectors.(Image: NASA/Chris Gunn)
The detectors, each about the size of a salt cracker, have around 16.8 million tiny pixels and provide the mission with an excellent image resolution. Pictured: Lead technician Billy Keim mounts a cover plate over the space telescope's detectors.
(Image: NASA/Chris Gunn)

Each of the infrared detectors—roughly the size of a salt cracker in terms of form factor—has an extremely high packing density of 16.8 million pixels. For the flight configuration, 18 of these sensors were integrated into the focal plane array of the WFI camera. In keeping with proven space redundancy concepts, NASA has six additional sensors available as flight-ready spares. This highly complex instrument converts infrared light into electrical signals that are processed into 300 megapixel images. Each individual "shot" of this wide-field instrument captures a section of the sky larger than the apparent area of a full moon. 

For the system architecture, this means a massive throughput: Roman collects data hundreds of times faster than Hubble and will generate a gigantic 20 petabytes (20,000 terabytes) of image data over the course of the five-year primary mission.

Systematic Scanning Instead of Selective Recording

Instead of performing complex, lengthy individual maneuvers for specific target objects, Roman operates as a highly efficient "survey mission". This means that the system continuously and automatically scans gigantic areas of the sky. This produces comparative data sets on a scale that will pose new challenges for astronomical databases. The observation data from a single month of operation alone will be sufficient to compile an unprecedented database for the majority of the stars in our home galaxy. 

This unprecedented data pipeline is crucial for mapping the distribution of matter in the cosmos, detecting exoplanets and unraveling the physical mystery of dark energy.

Dual Heat And Energy Management

One of the most critical subsystems for the stable operation of the telescope is the solar array sun shield. Here, the designers had to combine two fundamental requirements in one component group: a constant energy supply and highly efficient passive thermal management. The structure consists of six panels that are fitted with high-performance solar cells across the entire surface. While the two central panels remain rigidly connected to the outer barrel assembly (the outer housing structure), the four outer panels are only deployed in space via a deployment mechanism and locked in place at the same level as the central panels.

Technicians install solar panels on the outer façade of the observatory. The inner part of the telescope can be seen in the background, slightly to the left of the center of the picture.(Image: NASA/Sydney Rohde)
Technicians install solar panels on the outer façade of the observatory. The inner part of the telescope can be seen in the background, slightly to the left of the center of the picture.
(Image: NASA/Sydney Rohde)

In its orbital orientation, this array is permanently aligned with the sun in order to supply the on-board electronics with fail-safe power. At the same time, the extended surface acts as a massive heat shield that keeps the sensitive optics and sensors in the shade. This thermal insulation is vital for the survival of an infrared telescope: as infrared radiation is in fact thermal radiation, the waste heat from solar radiation on the housing would already saturate the highly sensitive detectors and completely "blind" the telescope. The design of the Sun Shield is therefore a prime example of multifunctional system integration in space travel.

Who is Nancy Grace roman?

The space telescope is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman (1925-2018), a pioneer of astronomy and space travel. She joined NASA in 1959, just a few months after the agency was founded. She was the first woman in a leadership position and served as the first Chief of Astronomy. She made it her life's work to put telescopes into orbit and established NASA's first astronomical space program.

Nancy Grace Roman played a critical role in the design, planning and, most importantly, funding of the Hubble Space Telescope. She spent years convincing members of Congress and skeptical scientists to support the project. 

Originally, the novel project was given the purely technical name WFIRST (Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope). In May 2020, NASA finally officially announced that the telescope would be renamed the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in her honor.

In the fall of 2025, the observatory consisted of two main segments:

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  • The inner section included the telescope, the instrument carrier, two instruments and the satellite bus,
  • while the outer section consisted of the outer tube assembly, the retractable aperture cover and the solar panels.

The outer part passed a vibration test and an intensive sound test, while the inner part was subjected to a 65-day thermal vacuum test. At the end of November, work began to bring the two segments together and now NASA has announced the completion of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

With the completion of Roman, we stand on the brink of unimaginable scientific discoveries. In the first five years of the mission, over 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies are expected to be explored. 

Julie McEnery, Senior Project Scientist at NASA Goddard

Despite precisely defined mission parameters, the developers and scientists are looking forward to one thing in particular: unpredictable system deviations in the form of scientific discoveries.

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