In 1959, Nancy Grace Roman became the first chief of astronomy at NASA. She worked tirelessly to advocate for space telescopes to study the Universe. Her leadership and perseverance paid off with some of NASA’s greatest achievements, including telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Dr. Roman’s legacy is now firmly cemented by NASA’s newest flagship space telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
Roman, as those of us working on the telescope call it, is poised to make transformative discoveries across huge swaths of the astrophysics landscape. The telescope’s 2.4-meter primary mirror (the same size as the primary mirror on HST) is relatively modest compared to the standard set by JWST’s 6.5-meter mirror. What makes Roman unique are its two instruments.
Roman’s science instrument is the Wide Field Instrument (WFI), a camera that can take optical and near-infrared images and spectra. The WFI contains 300 million pixels and will see an area of the sky about 100 times larger than the cameras on HST or JWST. The second instrument, the Roman Coronagraph Instrument, is designed to demonstrate the technology used to block starlight to directly image exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. As the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s project scientist for Roman for the past 11 years, I am personally excited about both of these amazing tools. It has been my privilege to help push the coronagraph instrument through design, build, and delivery, and the WFI will allow me to push forward my own research in ways I have been dreaming about for over two decades.