NASA transport nearly complete for Roman Space Telescope deployment

Sept. 17 (UPI) -- NASA has finished building its spacecraft bus to deploy the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into orbit after the space agency finishes installing its scientific instruments and the telescope.

"They call it a spacecraft bus for a reason," said Jackie Townsend , deputy project manager for the Roman Telescope. "It gets the telescope to where it needs to be in space."

Townsend said the bus is "more like an RV because it has a whole assortment of functions that enable Roman to accomplish its scientific goals."

NASA's scientific goals for the space telescope include surveying large areas of space and studying dark energy (which is thought to accelerate the expansion of the universe), dark matter (which is detected only by its gravitational pull) and exoplanets that are beyond the solar system.

Separate scientific teams will assess each of the telescope's areas of scientific study and the data that it provides.

For the telescope to work, though, it needs a means of transport, something to aim it at different areas in space and power it.

The telescope also needs to communicate with earth to control it, store data and maintain a suitable operating temperature while in space.

The telescope and spacecraft's various systems require almost 50 miles of electrical cables to power different systems and enable them to communicate with one another and earth.

The spacecraft bus also will contain solar panels, an aperture cover for the telescope's lens, a sun shade and a high-gain antenna.

The spacecraft and telescope combination will create an observatory in space that can communicate in real time and send 1.4 terabytes of data each day vs. up to 60 gigabytes of data from the James Webb Space Telescope and three gigabytes from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Engineers and others at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., have worked on the spacecraft bus for eight years while designing, building and testing it for its intended mission.

The spacecraft bus measures 13 feet wide by 6.5 feet high and weighs 8,400 pounds.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is named in honor of Nancy Grace Roman, who is credited with being the "mother of the Hubble Space Telescope" and was NASA's first chief of astronomy.

Roman supervised the Hubble Space Telescope's early planning and was the first woman in a leadership position at NASA. She died at age 93 in 2018.