NASA’s newest space observatory is passing its early checkups. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has shown it can hold steady with remarkable precision, and its Coronagraph Instrument has seen starlight for the first time, NASA said in a mission update on Sept. 30.
Roman launched on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Aug. 30 and spent about a month traveling to its observing spot near Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2, roughly a million miles from Earth. It is now in commissioning, the period when engineers switch on and test each system before science begins.
Holding still, very still
From Sept. 15 to 21, the team tested Roman’s fine-guidance system, which keeps the telescope locked on a target. The observatory stayed steady to better than 1/100,000 of a degree for 30 minutes during Wide Field Instrument observations, and for eight hours during coronagraph observations.
NASA compares that to keeping a laser pointed at a U.S. dime from about 150 miles away, and engineers expect it to improve to roughly 230 miles. According to Begoña Vila, the guiding systems lead at NASA Goddard, the guidance system reports guide-star positions about four times a second so the spacecraft can correct any drift.
First light for the coronagraph
On Sept. 22 and 27, the Coronagraph Instrument observed stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy near our own. A coronagraph blocks the glare of a star so fainter objects beside it, such as planets, can be seen. JPL instrument scientist Vanessa Bailey said the observation confirms the instrument can produce a focused image.
Why it matters
Roman carries a 2.4-meter (7.9-foot) mirror, the same size as Hubble’s, but its 288-megapixel Wide Field Instrument captures an area of sky roughly 200 times larger than Hubble’s infrared camera in a single shot. During its five-year primary mission, it is designed to study dark energy and dark matter, find thousands of exoplanets and survey huge swaths of the sky.
The catch
These were engineering checks, not discoveries. The coronagraph images show it can focus on stars; directly imaging planets around other stars is a much harder test that still lies ahead, and commissioning has more steps to go before regular science observations start.
More on Contoh
- Europe’s Jupiter Probe Juice Swings Past Earth and Picks Up a Big Speed Boost
- NASA Picks a Mission to Find Out Whether a Hole on the Moon Leads to a Giant Cave
- Astronomers Find the Fastest Star Yet Circling Our Galaxy’s Black Hole