Roman Science Team Community Briefing

November 15th – 19th, 2021

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope project held a virtual community workshop on November 15-19, 2021. Anyone interested in learning about the status of the Roman mission and its very broad range of science capabilities was invited to attend. The workshop goal is to share with the astronomical community the extensive work that has been done by the outgoing Roman science investigation teams to provide scientific support for mission design activities. The workshop focuses on science with the Wide-Field Instrument, with a separate session about the coronagraph technology-demonstration instrument occurring in late October.

Roman is a NASA Astrophysics Observatory featuring a 2.4m near-infrared-optimized telescope with a wide-field survey instrument and a coronagraph technology-demonstration instrument. Roman is due to launch in the mid 2020s and will address many fundamental questions in the areas of cosmology, exoplanets, and infrared survey astrophysics. In 2015, NASA selected eleven science investigation teams, comprising over 300 people, that span a broad range of astrophysical subfields (including, e.g., cosmology, exoplanets, galaxy evolution, stellar populations, and archival research methods). These teams have contributed significantly to shaping the current mission design and operations concept. Their work is now complete, and new science opportunities will be solicited by NASA in early 2022.

The workshop starts with a project overview of the mission and its status, and the capabilities being developed by the mission’s science operations and support centers. Each science investigation team will then share their Roman-related activities and results, which include:

• Evaluation of science and calibration requirements and instrument performance.
• Design of notional observing programs.
• Development of data analysis techniques and software.
• Scientific simulations.
• Precursor observations.

By sharing this information, future science community activities will be able to leverage the knowledge and tools that have already been developed. The actual implementation of Roman’s core surveys remains to be defined through an open, community-driven process.