{"id":782648,"date":"2024-05-21T12:51:54","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T17:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=782648"},"modified":"2024-05-21T12:51:54","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T17:51:54","slug":"nasa-tool-gets-ready-to-image-faraway-planets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=782648","title":{"rendered":"NASA Tool Gets Ready to Image Faraway Planets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em>A technology demo on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help increase the variety of distant planets scientists can directly image.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a>The Roman Coronagraph Instrument on NASA\u2019s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help pave the way in the search for habitable worlds outside our solar system by testing new tools that block starlight, revealing planets hidden by the glare of their parent stars. The technology demonstration recently shipped from NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to the agency\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where it has joined the rest of the space observatory in preparation for launch by May 2027.<\/p>\n<p>Before its cross-country journey, the Roman Coronagraph underwent the most complete test of its starlight-blocking abilities yet \u2014 what engineers call \u201cdigging the dark hole.\u201d In space, this process will enable astronomers to observe light directly from planets around other stars, or exoplanets. Once demonstrated on Roman, similar technologies on a future mission could enable astronomers to use that light to identify chemicals in an exoplanet\u2019s atmosphere, including ones that potentially indicate the presence of life.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\">\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Seeing Exoplanets Like Never Before With the Roman Coronagraph (Instrument Overview)\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GyXfc-g2Oc4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/p><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Roman Coronagraph Instrument aboard NASA\u2019s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will improve scientists\u2019 ability to directly image planets around other stars. As the most powerful coronagraph to ever fly in space, it will demonstrate new technologies that might be used by future missions like NASA\u2019s proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/GSFC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>For the dark hole test, the team placed the coronagraph in a sealed chamber designed to simulate the cold, dark vacuum of space. Using lasers and special optics, they replicated the light from a star as it would look when observed by the Roman telescope. When the light reaches the coronagraph, the instrument uses small circular obscurations called masks to effectively block out the star, like a car visor blocking the Sun or the Moon blocking the Sun during a total solar eclipse. This makes fainter objects near the star easier to see.<\/p>\n<p>Coronagraphs with masks are already flying in space, but they can\u2019t detect an Earth-like exoplanet. From another star system, our home planet would appear approximately 10 billion times dimmer than the Sun, and the two are relatively close to one another. So trying to directly image Earth would be like trying to see a speck of bioluminescent algae next to a lighthouse from 3,000 miles (about 5,000 kilometers) away. With previous coronagraphic technologies, even a masked star\u2019s glare overwhelms an Earth-like planet.<\/p>\n<p>The Roman Coronagraph will demonstrate techniques that can remove more unwanted starlight than past space coronagraphs by using several movable components. These moving parts will make it the first \u201cactive\u201d coronagraph to fly in space. Its main tools are two deformable mirrors, each only 2 inches (5 centimeters) in diameter and backed by <a>more than 2,000 tiny pistons that move up and down. The pistons work together to change the shape of the deformable mirrors so that they can compensate for the unwanted stray light that spills around the edges of the masks.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\">\n<p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Roman Space Telescope&#039;s Coronagraph Instrument\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_1zfz-OEKH8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/p><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">How does the Roman Coronagraph Instrument work? This video shows how it removes unwanted starlight to reveal planets around other stars. Credit: NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The deformable mirrors also help correct for imperfections in the Roman telescope\u2019s other optics. Although they are too small to affect Roman\u2019s other highly precise measurements, the imperfections can send stray starlight into the dark hole. Precise changes made to each deformable mirror\u2019s shape, imperceptible to the naked eye, compensate for these imperfections.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe flaws are so small and have such a minor effect that we had to do over 100 iterations to get it right,\u201d said Feng Zhao, deputy project manager for the Roman Coronagraph at JPL. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like when you go to see an optometrist and they put different lenses up and ask you, \u2018Is this one better? How about this one?\u2019 And the coronagraph performed even better than we\u2019d hoped.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>During the test, the readouts from the coronagraph\u2019s camera show a doughnut-shaped region around the central star that slowly gets darker as the team directs more starlight away from it \u2014 hence the nickname \u201cdigging the dark hole.\u201d In space, an exoplanet lurking in this dark region would slowly appear as the instrument does its work with its deformable mirrors.<\/p>\n<p>More than 5,000 planets have been discovered and confirmed around other stars in the last 30 years, but most have been detected indirectly, meaning their presence is inferred based on how they affect their parent star. Detecting these relative changes in the parent star is far easier than seeing the signal of the much fainter planet. <a>In fact, fewer than 70 exoplanets have been directly imaged.<\/p>\n<p>The planets that have been directly imaged to date aren\u2019t like Earth: Most are much bigger, hotter, and typically farther from their stars. These features make them easier to detect but also less hospitable to life as we know it.<\/p>\n<p>To look for potentially habitable worlds, scientists need to image planets that are not only billions of times dimmer than their stars, but also orbit them at the right distance for liquid water to exist on the planet\u2019s surface \u2014 a precursor for the kind of life found on Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Developing the capabilities to directly image Earth-like planets will require intermediate steps like the Roman Coronagraph. At its maximum capability, it could image an exoplanet similar to Jupiter around a star like our Sun: a large, cool planet just outside the star\u2019s habitable zone.<\/p>\n<p>What NASA learns from the Roman Coronagraph will help blaze a path for future missions designed to directly image Earth-size planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars. The agency\u2019s concept for a future telescope called the Habitable Worlds Observatory aims to image at least 25 planets similar to Earth using an instrument that will build on what the Roman Coronagraph Instrument demonstrates in space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe active components, like deformable mirrors, are essential if you want to achieve the goals of a mission like the Habitable Worlds Observatory,\u201d said JPL\u2019s Ilya Poberezhskiy, the project systems engineer for the Roman Coronagraph. \u201cThe active nature of the Roman Coronagraph Instrument allows you to take ordinary optics to a different level. It makes the whole system more complex, but we couldn\u2019t do these incredible things without it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by JPL and Caltech\/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Space and Mission Systems in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Melbourne, Florida; and Teledyne Scientific &amp; Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.<\/p>\n<p>The Roman Coronagraph Instrument was designed and built at JPL, which manages the instrument for NASA. Contributions were made by ESA (the European Space Agency), JAXA (the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency), the French space agency CNES (Centre National d\u2019\u00c9tudes Spatiales), and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany. Caltech, in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA. The Roman Science Support Center at Caltech\/IPAC partners with JPL on data management for the Coronagraph and generating the instrument\u2019s commands.<\/p>\n<p>For more information about the Roman telescope, visit:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Calla Cofield<br \/>Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.<br \/>626-808-2469<br \/>calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov<\/p>\n<p>Claire Andreoli<br \/>NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.<br \/>301-286-1940<br \/>claire.andreoli@nasa.gov<\/p>\n<p>2024-068<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/missions\/roman-space-telescope\/nasa-tool-gets-ready-to-image-faraway-planets\/?rand=772114\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A technology demo on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help increase the variety of distant planets scientists can directly image. The Roman Coronagraph Instrument on NASA\u2019s Nancy Grace&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":782649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-782648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-NASA"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=782648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/782649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=782648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=782648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=782648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}