Construction of Roman Continues With the Addition of its Sunshade

NASA continues to progress with the development of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST), the next-generation observatory with a target launch date of 2027. As the direct successor to the venerable Hubble Space Telescope, Roman will build on the successes of Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, the “mother of the Hubble,” the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a panoramic field of view 200 times greater than Hubble’s infrared view, enabling the first wide-field maps of the Universe.

Combined with observations by the ESA’s Euclid mission, these maps will help astronomers resolve the mystery of Dark Matter and cosmic expansion. The development process reached another milestone as the mission team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center successfully integrated the mission’s sunshade—a visor-like aperture cover—into the outer barrel assembly. This deployable structure will shield the telescope from sunlight and keep it at a stable temperature, allowing it to take high-resolution optical and infrared images of the cosmos.

Similar in function to Webb‘s sunshield, Roman’s is designed to make its instruments more sensitive to faint light sources, allowing the telescope to resolve distant galaxies, dimmer stars, brown dwarfs, and the gas and dust that permeate the interstellar medium (ISM). The shield consists of two layers of reinforced thermal blankets that will remain folded during launch, allowing the telescope to fit inside its payload fairing. It will deploy once the telescope has reached space using a system of three booms that are triggered electronically.

The integration took a few hours, during which the technicians joined the sunshield and outer barrel assembly in the largest clean room at NASA Goddard. In addition to protecting the telescope from micrometeoroid impacts, the outer barrel assembly will also prevent light contamination and keep the telescope at a stable temperature. This will be accomplished by a series of heaters that prevent the telescope’s mirrors from experiencing temperature swings that would cause them to expand and contract. Said Brian Simpson, Roman’s deployable aperture cover lead at NASA Goddard, in a NASA press release:

“We’re prepared for micrometeoroid impacts that could occur in space, so the blanket is heavily fortified. One layer is even reinforced with Kevlar, the same thing that lines bulletproof vests. By placing some space in between the layers we reduce the risk that light would leak in, because it’s unlikely that the light would pass through both layers at the exact same points where the holes were.”

With this integration complete, the mission has now passed the Key Decision Point-D (KDP-D) milestone, the transition from fabrication to the assembly phase. This will be followed by the integration and testing phases, which Roman is on track for completion by fall 2026, followed by the launch phase no later than May 2027. The sunshade and outer barrel assembly were built by Goddard engineers and have been individually tested many times. Following the integration, the engineers conducted a deployment test that verified that they function together.

Since the sunshade was designed to deploy in space, the system isn’t powerful enough to deploy in Earth’s gravity, so the test involved a gravity negation system to offset its weight. Next, the team will conduct a thermal vacuum test to ensure the components function in the temperature and pressure environment of space. After that, they will put the assembled components through a shake test to simulate the intense vibrations they will experience during launch.

In the coming months, technicians will attach the telescope’s solar panels (which completed testing this past summer) to the outer barrel assembly and sunshade. The team expects to have these components integrated with the rest of the observatory by the end of the year. Said Laurence Madison, a mechanical engineer at NASA Goddard:

“Roman is made up of a lot of separate components that come together after years of design and fabrication. The deployable aperture cover and outer barrel assembly were built at the same time, and up until the integration the two teams mainly used reference drawings to make sure everything would fit together as they should. So the successful integration was both a proud moment and a relief!”

In addition to surveying billions of galaxies and investigating the mystery of Dark Energy, Roman will use its wide-field imagers and advanced suite of spectrometers to directly image exoplanets and planet-forming disks, supermassive black holes (SMBHs), stellar nurseries, and small bodies in our Solar System. Said Sheri Thorn, an aerospace engineer working on Roman’s sunshade at NASA Goddard:

“It’s been incredible to see these major components go from computer models to building and now integrating them. Since it’s all coming together at Goddard, we get a front row seat to the process. We’ve seen it mature, kind of like watching a child grow up, and it’s a really gratifying experience.”

Further Reading: NASA

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