Overview
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is NASA’s future premier astrophysics observatory. Roman will enable advances in astrophysics by providing a large-scale survey capability in infrared wavelengths. Expected to launch before May 2027, the observatory is designed to capture data that will allow astronomers to unlock the mysteries of the universe, answering high-priority scientific questions related to the evolution of the universe and the habitability of planets around other stars.
Using a 2.4m (7.9ft) primary mirror, Roman will capture comparable quality images to the Hubble Space Telescope, but with more than 100 times the field of view, enabling the observatory to conduct comprehensive and efficient surveys of the infrared sky. Scientists estimate Roman has the potential to examine a billion galaxies over the course of its mission. It will provide a treasure trove of data to scientists around the world who will have access to the observatory’s data. Similar to NASA’s other large astrophysics missions, Roman is also a top mission priority of the last astrophysics decadal survey.
What We're Doing
NASA selected our diverse team to build the opto-mechanical assembly and thermal management system on Roman’s primary scientific instrument, the Wide Field Instrument, or WFI. We also managed a badgeless partnership with GSFC to fully integrate and test WFI. The optical-mechanical assembly, which includes the optical bench, thermal control system, precision mechanisms, optics, electronics and the relative calibration system, provides the stable structure and thermal environment that enables the wide field, high quality observations of WFI.
A legacy of discovery, the future of innovation
BAE Systems has supported all of NASA’s flagship astrophysics missions, from the Great Observatories programs, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, to the James Webb Space Telescope and now Roman. Our technology development and expertise have enabled decades of discoveries, enhancing the understanding of our universe, its history, and our place in it.
For Webb, we designed and built the optics system, which includes the primary, secondary, tertiary, and fine-steering mirrors; nanometer-capable actuators; and the alignment algorithms. Each of the beryllium mirror segments in the primary and secondary mirrors required us to build actuators with nanometer precision. Fast-forwarding to Roman, we developed the ACM, or alignment compensation mechanism. With design heritage from the Webb mirror actuators, the ACM is a hexapod assembly that provides nanometer level precision alignment for Roman’s mosaic detector array. Today, we are leveraging and improving on this same technology to enable NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), which will require picometer level stability – that's 1000x times more stable than Webb. Through the Ultra-Stable Large Telescope Research and Analysis (ULTRA) program, we’ve made significant progress in advancing our actuator technology, ultimately leading to the patenting of a picometer-capable actuator in 2025. This breakthrough has the potential to redefine the possibilities for ultra-stable solutions, enabling new frontiers in scientific discovery and exploration.