The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's high-gain antenna has been put through its final round of testing by engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This NASA observatory will help unravel the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter, search for and image exoplanets, and investigate numerous infrared astrophysics topics when it launches in May 2027.

The antenna, depicted above in a test chamber, will serve as the Roman spacecraft's primary communication link with the ground. It will transmit the most data than any previous NASA astrophysics mission. Carbon composite makes the antenna reflector, which despite its lightweight, can withstand the spacecraft's wide temperature range. Despite having a diameter of 5.6 feet (1.7 meters), the dish only weighs 24 pounds (10.9 kilograms) and is about as tall as a refrigerator.

 

Developing the High Gain Antenna

Roman can send radio signals to Earth over a million miles of space thanks to its size. The dual-band antenna will receive commands and relay information about the spacecraft's health and location at a single frequency. It will use a different frequency to send a lot of data to New Mexico, Australia, and Japan ground stations at speeds of up to 500 megabits per second. The Roman team will always be able to communicate with the spacecraft because these locations are spread out.

The government and the commercial sector worked together to make this antenna. The feed assemblies' radio frequency design and production were NASA's responsibility. The composite reflector and strut assembly's final flight mechanical design and fabrication were contracted out to a commercial partner, Applied Aerospace Structures Corporation (AASC), in Stockton, California.

NASA received the finished antenna in December. It has been put through many tests by engineers at AASC and Goddard to ensure it will work as expected in space, where temperatures will range from minus 26 to 284 degrees Fahrenheit (or minus 32 to 140 degrees Celsius). In addition, the team conducted vibrational testing on the antenna to ensure it could withstand the spacecraft launch. In the photo above, engineers measured the antenna's performance in a radio-frequency anechoic test chamber.

Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, have finished testing the high-gain antenna for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
(Photo: NASA/Chris Gunn)
Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, have finished testing the high-gain antenna for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

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Roman Space Telescope Mission

Pyramidal foam pieces cover every surface in the test chamber to reduce interference from reflections during testing. After attaching it to the articulating boom assembly, the team will then electrically integrate the antenna with Roman's Radio Frequency Communications System. Infrared astrophysics, dark energy, and exoplanets are just a few of the fundamental questions that the NASA observatory known as the Roman Space Telescope aims to answer.

The primary mirror of the telescope is the same size as the primary mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope, measuring 2.4 meters (7.9 feet). The Wide Field Instrument and the Coronagraph Instrument will be the two instruments on the Roman Space Telescope. With a 100-fold larger field of view than the Hubble infrared instrument, the Wide Field Instrument can observe more of the sky in a shorter time, as per NASA.

The Wide Field Instrument, the primary instrument, will measure light from a billion galaxies throughout the mission. It will search for approximately 2,600 exoplanets through a microlensing survey of the inner Milky Way. The Coronagraph Instrument will carry out high-contrast imaging and spectroscopy of individual nearby exoplanets. The Roman Space Telescope will have a five-year primary mission and a possible five-year extended mission.

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