Mission and Observatory

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a next-generation observatory due for launch in the mid 2020’s. The mission lifetime is approximately five years, with an estimated close out time of three months. Key characteristics of the mission are listed below:

Mission and Spacecraft Parameters

• Duration: Five years, with a 10 year goal
• Orbit: Sun-Earth L2
• Launch Site: Cape Canaveral
• Baseline Launch Vehicle: Considering Falcon Heavy and Vulcan
• Operating Temperature: 298 K
• S/C Bus:
      -   Downlink rate: 250-500 Mbps
      -   Data Volume: 11 Tbits/day
• The observatory will be supported by the following ground stations: NEN-White Sands, NM; ESA-New Norcia, Australia; JAXA – GREAT, Japan; DSN.
• Able to be refueled in flight robotically

Telescope Parameters

• Primary Mirror size: 2.4 meters
• Mirror temperature: 265 K
• Allowed roll angle range: -15 to +15 degrees around angle providing max solar power
• Jitter: 12 milliarcseconds
• Drift: 8 milliarcseconds

Observatory Instrumentation

• Wide Field Instrument (WFI)
      -   Consisting of eight imaging filters, a grism, and a low resolution prism.
• Coronagraph

An Expanded view of the observatory

The Roman observatory split into its spacecraft (red) and integrated payload (purple) components.

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