253-NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Hardware Highlights: Winter 2024

Every day, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope moves closer to completion. This video highlights some of the important hardware milestones from part of this journey. Components and systems are built separately, tested, and then integrated with larger parts of the spacecraft to carefully build the full telescope. Roman’s foundation is the primary structure, or spacecraft bus, which houses electronics and support systems. Like the chassis of a car, everything is built up from this aluminum hexagon.

In this video, covering the winter of 2024, Goddard’s high-capacity centrifuge goes through tests and then performs tests of the instrument carrier which will hold Roman’s two instruments. The centrifuge is 120 feet across and can spin at over 30 rpm. For the test, the instrument carrier holds test masses for the Wide Field Instrument and the Coronagraph instrument technology demonstration. The 5.6-foot (1.7-meter) wide dish on the high gain antenna system, Roman’s main connection to Earth, goes through a test deployment in Goddard’s high bay clean room. The Solar Array Sun Shield test panels are lowered into the Space Environment Simulator to undergo weeks of vacuum and temperature testing. The chamber can create a near-perfect vacuum and subject hardware to temperatures from minus 310° Fahrenheit to 302° F. The propulsion system, consisting of fuel tanks and 24 thrusters, is integrated with the primary structure. The process begins by placing a support structure called the pantheon into the clean room. The primary structure is lifted onto that, giving engineers access underneath it. Then cranes lift the propulsion system onto a nearby lift and it is pushed underneath. As the lift slowly raises the propulsion system, pillars holding small attitude control thrusters slide precisely into grooves in the primary structure. Everything is bolted together and then the single unit is lifted back off the pantheon.