NASA begins development of Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's planet-hunting instrument

NASA engineers have begun developing the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s new instrument that will allow scientists to study faint exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. Taking to Twitter last week, the agency revealed that the instrument is called Roman Coronagraph, which took years of efforts for designing, constructing, and acquiring of its components.

“The Roman Coronagraph Instrument team can now start assembly, integration, & testing! The team has spent years designing, constructing, & acquiring the coronagraph's components”, the agency wrote in its tweet. “It will demonstrate new technologies that will allow us to study faint planets around nearby stars.”

Originally called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), the telescope was renamed after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer, in 2020. Currently, under development, the telescope will launch no earlier than the mid-2020s. 

Purpose of the Roman Space Telescope

The telescope is being developed to solve the mysteries over the universe’s expansion and look for new worlds beyond our solar system. According to NASA, this telescope will also be used to answer essential questions in the areas of dark energy which, according to scientists, has a role in cosmic expansion. 

Fitted with a primary mirror measuring 2.4 meters (7.9 feet) in diameter, the Roman Space telescope will have two instruments-- the Wide Field Instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument, which entered the development phase. Although Roman Space Telescope's primary mirror has a size equal to the Hubble Space Telescope's, it would have a field of view 100 times greater than the latter's infrared instrument. NASA says that this would allow the telescope to capture more of the sky with less observing time.

On the other hand, the Coronagraph Instrument, which would be a technology demonstration, will perform high contrast imaging and spectroscopy of individual nearby exoplanets. The telescope was renamed after Nancy Grace in 2020 after the astronomer who "paved the way for space telescopes focused on the broader universe", says NASA. 

"It is because of Nancy Grace Roman’s leadership and vision that NASA became a pioneer in astrophysics and launched Hubble, the world’s most powerful and productive space telescope", former NASA Administrator, Jim Bridenstine had said in a statement. "I can think of no better name for WFIRST, which will be the successor to NASA’s Hubble and Webb Telescopes".