The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is designed to be capable of a set of notional observing programs that form Roman’s design reference mission, and whose execution would fulfill the mission’s top level science objectives. These include three Core Community Surveys and a significant program of General Astrophysics Surveys, undertaken with the Wide Field Instrument (WFI); and a set of technology demonstration observations undertaken with the Coronagraph Instrument. The Core Community Surveys are the High Latitude Wide Area Survey; the High Latitude Time Domain Survey; and the Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey. Links below describe the concepts for these surveys used in the Design Reference Mission.

The actual implementation of Roman’s core surveys will be defined through an open, community-driven process. General Astrophysics observing programs, as well as funding to work with Roman data, will be competed and selected through future peer reviews. The surveys and programs all relate to at least two of the three main science themes of the Roman Space Telescope: measuring dark energy, investigating exoplanets, and great observatory astrophysics and planetary science.

All Roman observations will be publicly available with no period of limited access.

Summary of Notional Observing Programs for Prime Mission