Fascination technology New NASA Space Telescope Completed

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In our section "Fascination Technology," we present impressive research and development projects to designers every week. Today: the development of NASA's new Nancy Grace Roman space telescope.

More than a thousand technicians and engineers assembled the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from millions of individual parts. It is nearly 13 meters (approx. 43 ft) long and costs approximately 3.5 billion euros (approx. 4 billion USD).

Many components were manufactured and tested in parallel to save time. After completion, Roman is now undergoing a series of tests before being transported to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the summer of 2026. The space telescope is scheduled to begin its mission in space by May 2027 at the latest, but the team is aiming for a launch as early as autumn 2026.

Roman uses state-of-the-art sensors built on years of experience with infrared detectors in NASA's Hubble and Webb instruments. However, Roman's imaging surface is significantly larger to capture a much wider field of view.

Greg Mosby, Research astrophysicist at NASA Goddard

Optical wide-angle capture on a new level

The Roman Telescope is not just another observatory in space—it represents a technological paradigm shift in optical wide-field imaging. Although it uses the same 2.4-meter (approx. 8 ft) primary mirror aperture as the legendary Hubble Telescope, its system design revolutionises the way astrophysical data is generated. Through the newly developed Wide-Field Instrument (WFI)—an infrared camera—the field of view is expanded by a factor of 100, while maintaining the exact same level of detail resolution.

The hardware specifications at a glance:

• Optical sensing: An array of 18 high-precision H4RG-10 infrared detectors forms a focal plane with over 300 megapixels.
• Data throughput: The optoelectronics generate around 11 terabits of raw data per day, which are transmitted to Earth at 250 to 500 Mbps.
• Mechanical precision: A hexapod mechanism (Alignment Compensation Mechanism) aligns the detectors within the nanometer range (nm) to compensate for thermal deformations.

The detectors of the Wide Field Instrument (WFI)

Each of the infrared detectors—roughly the size of a saltine cracker—features an extremely high packing density of 16.8 million pixels. For the flight configuration, 18 of these sensors were integrated into the focal plane array of the WFI camera. In line with proven spacecraft redundancy concepts, NASA has six additional sensors available as flight-ready spares.
This highly complex instrument converts infrared light into electrical signals, which are processed into 300-megapixel images. Each individual "shot" from this wide-field instrument captures a section of the sky larger than the apparent area of a full moon.

For the system architecture, this means a massive throughput: Roman collects data hundreds of times faster than Hubble and, over the course of its five-year primary mission, will generate a staggering 20 petabytes (20,000 terabytes) of image data.

Systematic scanning instead of point-specific capture

Instead of executing complex, lengthy individual maneuvers for specific target objects, Roman operates as a highly efficient "survey mission." This means the system continuously and automatically scans vast areas of the sky. The resulting comparative datasets are of such magnitude that they will pose new challenges for astronomical databases. The observational data from just a single month of operation will be enough to compile an unprecedented data foundation for the majority of the stars in our home galaxy.

This unparalleled data pipeline is crucial for mapping the distribution of matter in the cosmos, detecting exoplanets, and unraveling the physical mystery of dark energy.

Dual thermal and energy management

One of the most critical subsystems for the stable operation of the telescope is the Solar Array Sun Shield. Here, the engineers had to combine two fundamental requirements into one component group: a constant power supply and highly efficient passive thermal management. The structure consists of six panels, fully equipped with high-performance solar cells. While the two central panels remain fixed to the Outer Barrel Assembly (the outer housing structure), the four outer panels are deployed in space using a deployment mechanism and locked into alignment with the central panels.

In its orbital alignment, this array is permanently oriented toward the Sun to reliably supply power to the onboard electronics. At the same time, the extended surface functions as a massive heat shield, keeping the sensitive optics and sensors in the shade. This thermal insulation is vital for an infrared telescope: since infrared radiation is essentially heat radiation, the heat generated by solar exposure on the housing would saturate the highly sensitive detectors and completely "blind" the telescope. The design of the Sun Shield is thus a prime example of multifunctional system integration in spaceflight.

In the fall of 2025, the observatory consisted of two main segments:   

• The inner part included the telescope, the instrument carrier, two instruments, and the satellite bus,
• while the outer part consisted of the outer tube assembly, the deployable aperture cover, and the solar panels.

The outer part underwent a vibration test and an intensive acoustic test, while the inner part was subjected to a 65-day thermal vacuum test. At the end of November, the process of merging the two segments began, and NASA has now announced the completion of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

With the completion of Roman, we stand on the brink of unimaginable scientific discoveries. In the first five years of the mission, over 100,000 distant worlds, hundreds of millions of stars, and billions of galaxies are expected to be explored.

Julie McEnery, Senior Research Scientists at NASA Goddard

Despite precisely defined mission parameters, the developers and scientists are especially excited about one thing: unpredictable system deviations in the form of scientific discoveries.