“We don’t have moments of horror when we deploy,” Townsend said. “Obviously, launch is always a risk, the possibility of detection that comes with being separated from the launch vehicle… Then, obviously, opening the doorway to have it unfold is another risk. But these seem like normal aerospace risks, not unusual, harrowing moments for Roman.”
It also helps that Roman will be using a primary mirror donated to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office, the US government's spy satellite agency. The NRO originally ordered a mirror for a telescope that could look at Earth, but the spy agency no longer needed it. Before NASA got its hands on the extra mirror in 2012, scientists working on the preliminary design of what became the Roman were thinking about a smaller telescope.
The larger telescope will make Roman a more powerful tool for science, and the NRO donation eliminated the risk of problems or delays in the production of the new mirror. But the positive effect meant that NASA had to build a more massive spacecraft and use a larger rocket to carry it, increasing the cost of the observatory.
Testing of Roman's components went well this year. Work on the Novel continued at Goddard even after the government shutdown in the fall. At Webb, engineers discovered one problem after another as they tried to make sure the observatory would perform as intended in space. There were leaking valves, Webb sun visor tears, a damaged sensor and loose screws. Roman's engineers have so far found no “significant surprises” during ground testing, Townsend said.
“When you're doing the last round of environmental testing, we always hope that you've pushed the hardware down to the lower levels of the build, and it looks like in Roman's case we've done an impressive job at the lower level,” she said.
Now that Roman is fully assembled, Goddard's attention will turn to a comprehensive functional test of the observatory early next year, followed by electromagnetic interference testing and another round of acoustic and vibration testing. Then, perhaps around June of next year, NASA will send the observatory to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to prepare for the launch of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.
“We’ve actually reached the final stage of environmental testing of the system,” Townsend said. “It had definitely seen worse conditions before we started the launch.”
