NASA Completes Groundbreaking Integration of Roman Coronagraph at Goddard Space Flight Center

GREENBELT, MARYLAND - NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has achieved a significant milestone by successfully integrating the Roman Coronagraph Instrument onto the mission's Instrument Carrier in a clean room at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The integration marks an important step forward in NASA's efforts to search for habitable worlds and, potentially, life beyond Earth. The coronagraph, designed to directly observe exoplanets by blocking the intense light from their host stars, is now ready for its technological testing phase in space.

"We'll be applying those lessons learned [from the Roman Coronagraph] to the next generation of NASA flagship missions that will be explicitly designed to look for Earth-like planets," said Rob Zellem, Roman Space Telescope deputy project scientist for communications at Goddard.

The coronagraph's goal is to test and showcase its capabilities in space, serving as a technological stepping stone for future missions like NASA's proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory. The instrument is expected to be launched no later than May 2027.

The integration of the Roman Coronagraph Instrument with the Instrument Carrier was carried out using specialized tools and adapters, including the Horizontal Integration Tool previously used for NASA's Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes.

"It's really rewarding to watch these teams come together and build up the Roman observatory," said Liz Daly, the integrated payload assembly integration and test lead for Roman at Goddard. "That's the result of a lot of teams, long hours, hard work, sweat, and tears."

The Roman Space Telescope is a collaborative effort between NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and international partners including the European Space Agency, JAXA, CNES, and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

Engineers will now conduct various checks and alignment tests to ensure everything functions correctly before the spacecraft is ready for its debut mission.