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NASA’s Roman to Search for Signs of Dark Matter Clumps
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By NASA
AMS-02 mounted on the outside of the space station.NASA Visible matter in the form of stars and planets adds up to about five percent of the total known mass of the Universe. The rest is either dark matter, antimatter, or dark energy. The exact nature of these substances is unknown, but the International Space Station’s Alpha-Magnetic Spectrometer or AMS-02 is helping to solve the mystery.
AMS-02 collects data on charged particles from cosmic ray events, which helps scientists understand the origin of those rays and could ultimately reveal whether dark matter and antimatter exist.
To date, the instrument has collected data on about 573 events per second on average – just over 18 billion per year. This high volume of data enables highly precise statistical analyses, and multiple groups of researchers independently process the raw data to ensure accurate results.
Learn more about astrophysics research on the space station.
This view shows the core of AMS-02, a massive magnet that bends particles from space to reveal whether their charge is positive or negative.NASA AMS-02 is the hexagonal shape visible on one of the space station’s trusses, just to the right of the center.NASA Keep Exploring Discover More Topics
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By NASA
A NASA-developed material made of carbon nanotubes will enable our search for exoplanets—some of which might be capable of supporting life. Originally developed in 2007 by a team of researchers led by Innovators of the Year John Hagopian and Stephanie Getty at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, this carbon nanotube technology is being refined for potential use on NASA’s upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO)—the first telescope designed specifically to search for signs of life on planets orbiting other stars.
As shown in the figure below, carbon nanotubes look like graphene (a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice) that is rolled into a tube. The super-dark material consists of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (i.e., nested nanotubes) that grow vertically into a “forest.” The carbon nanotubes are 99% empty space so the light entering the material doesn’t get reflected. Instead, the light enters the nanotube forest and jiggles electrons in the hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms, converting the light to heat. The ability of the carbon nanotubes to eliminate almost all light is enabling for NASA’s scientific instruments because stray light limits how sensitive the observations can be. When applied to instrument structures, this material can eliminate much of the stray light and enable new and better observations.
Left: Artist’s conception of graphene, single and multiwalled carbon nanotube structures. Right: Scanning electron microscope image of vertically aligned multiwalled carbon nanotube forest with a section removed in the center. Credit: Delft University/Dr. Sten Vollebregt and NASA GSFC Viewing exoplanets is incredibly difficult; the exoplanets revolve around stars that are 10 billion times brighter than they are. It’s like looking at the Sun and trying to see a dim star next to it in the daytime. Specialized instruments called coronagraphs must be used to block the light from the star to enable these exoplanets to be viewed. The carbon nanotube material is employed in the coronagraph to block as much stray light as possible from entering the instrument’s detector.
The image below depicts a notional telescope and coronagraph imaging an exoplanet. The telescope collects the light from the distant star and exoplanet. The light is then directed to a coronagraph that collimates the beam, making the light rays parallel, and then the beam is reflected off the apodizer mirror, which is used to precisely control the diffraction of light. Carbon nanotubes on the apodizer mirror absorb the stray light that is diffracted off edges of the telescope structures, so it does not contaminate the observations. The light is then focused on the focal plane mask, which blocks the light from the star but allows light from the exoplanet to pass. The light gets collimated again and is then reflected off a deformable mirror to correct distortion in the image. Finally, the light passes through the Lyot Stop, which is also coated with carbon nanotubes to remove the remaining stray light. The beam is then focused onto the detector array, which forms the image.
Even with all these measures some stray light still reaches the detector, but the coronagraph creates a dark zone where only the light coming from the exoplanet can be seen. The final image on the right in the figure below shows the remaining light from the star in yellow and the light from the exoplanet in red in the dark zone.
Schematic of a notional telescope and coronagraph imaging an exoplanet Credit: Advanced Nanophotonics/John Hagopian, LLC HWO will use a similar scheme to search for habitable exoplanets. Scientists will analyze the spectrum of light captured by HWO to determine the gases in the atmosphere of the exoplanet. The presence of water vapor, oxygen, and perhaps other gases can indicate if an exoplanet could potentially support life.
But how do you make a carbon-nanotube-coated apodizer mirror that could be used on the HWO? Hagopian’s company Advanced Nanophotonics, LLC received Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding to address this challenge.
Carbon nanotubes are grown by depositing catalyst seeds onto a substrate and then placing the substrate into a tube-shaped furnace and heating it to 1382 degrees F, which is red hot! Gases containing carbon are then flowed into the heated tube, and at these temperatures the gases are absorbed by the metal catalyst and transform into a solution, similar to how carbon dioxide in soda water fizzes. The carbon nanotubes literally grow out of the substrate into vertically aligned tubes to form a “forest” wherever the catalyst is located.
Since the growth of carbon nanotubes on the apodizer mirror must occur only in designated areas where stray light is predicted, the catalyst must be applied only to those areas. The four main challenges that had to be overcome to develop this process were: 1) how to pattern the catalyst precisely, 2) how to get a mirror to survive high temperatures without distorting, 3) how to get a coating to survive high temperatures and still be shiny, and 4) how to get the carbon nanotubes to grow on top of a shiny coating. The Advanced Nanophotonics team refined a multi-step process (see figure below) to address these challenges.
Making an Apodizer Mirror for use in a coronagraph Credit: Advanced Nanophotonics/John Hagopian, LLC First a silicon mirror substrate is fabricated to serve as the base for the mirror. This material has properties that allow it to survive very high temperatures and remain flat. These 2-inch mirrors are so flat that if one was scaled to the diameter of Earth, the highest mountain would only be 2.5 inches tall!
Next, the mirror is coated with multiple layers of dielectric and metal, which are deposited by knocking atoms off a target and onto the mirror in a process called sputtering. This coating must be reflective to direct the desired photons, but still be able to survive in the hot environment with corrosive gases that is required to grow carbon nanotubes.
Then a material called resist that is sensitive to light is applied to the mirror and a pattern is created in the resist with a laser. The image on the mirror is chemically developed to remove the resist only in the areas illuminated by the laser, creating a pattern where the mirror’s reflecting surface is exposed only where nanotube growth is desired.
The catalyst is then deposited over the entire mirror surface using sputtering to provide the seeds for carbon nanotube growth. A process called liftoff is used to remove the catalyst and the resist that are located where nanotubes growth is not needed. The mirror is then put in a tube furnace and heated to 1380 degrees Fahrenheit while argon, hydrogen, and ethylene gases are flowed through the tube, which allows the chemical vapor deposition of carbon nanotubes where the catalyst has been patterned. The apodizer mirror is cooled and removed from the tube furnace and characterized to make sure it is still flat, reflective where desired, and very black everywhere else.
The Habitable Worlds Observatory will need a coronagraph with an optimized apodizer mirror to effectively view exoplanets and gather their light for evaluation. To make sure NASA has the best chance to succeed in this search for life, the mirror design and nanotube technology are being refined in test beds across the country.
Under the SBIR program, Advanced Nanophotonics, LLC has delivered apodizers and other coronagraph components to researchers including Remi Soummer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, Eduardo Bendek and Rus Belikov at NASA Ames, Tyler Groff at NASA Goddard, and Arielle Bertrou-Cantou and Dmitri Mawet at the California Institute of Technology. These researchers are testing these components and the results of these studies will inform new designs to eventually enable the goal of a telescope with a contrast ratio of 10 billion to 1.
Reflective Apodizers delivered to Scientists across the country Credit: Advanced Nanophotonics/John Hagopian, LLC In addition, although the desired contrast ratio cannot be achieved using telescopes on Earth, testing apodizer mirror designs on ground-based telescopes not only facilitates technology development, but helps determine the objects HWO might observe. Using funding from the SBIR program, Advanced Nanophotonics also developed transmissive apodizers for the University of Notre Dame to employ on another instrument—the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) Upgrade. In this case the carbon nanotubes were patterned and grown on glass that transmits the light from the telescope into the coronagraph. The Gemini telescope is an 8.1-meter telescope located in Chile, high atop a mountain in thin air to allow for better viewing. Dr. Jeffrey Chilcote is leading the effort to upgrade the GPI and install the carbon nanotube patterned apodizers and Lyot Stops in the coronagraph to allow viewing of exoplanets starting next year. Discoveries enabled by GPI may also drive future apodizer designs.
More recently, the company was awarded a Phase II SBIR contract to develop next-generation apodizers and other carbon nanotube-based components for the test beds of existing collaborators and new partners at the University of Arizona and the University of California Santa Clara.
Tyler Groff (left) and John Hagopian (right) display a carbon nanotube patterned apodizer mirror used in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center coronagraph test bed. Credit: Advanced Nanophotonics/John Hagopian, LLC As a result of this SBIR-funded technology effort, Advanced Nanophotonics has collaborated with NASA Scientists to develop a variety of other applications for this nanotube technology.
A special carbon nanotube coating developed by Advanced Nanophotonics was used on the recently launched NASA Ocean Color Instrument onboard the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission that is observing both the atmosphere and phytoplankton in the ocean, which are key to the health of our planet. A carbon nanotube coating that is only a quarter of the thickness of a human hair was applied around the entrance slit of the instrument. This coating absorbs 99.5% of light in the visible to infrared and prevents stray light from reflecting into the instrument to enable more accurate measurements. Hagopian’s team is also collaborating with the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) team to apply the technology to mitigate stray light in the European Space Agency’s space-based gravity wave mission.
They are also working to develop carbon nanotubes for use as electron beam emitters for a project sponsored by the NASA Planetary Instrument Concepts for the Advancement of Solar System Observations (PICASSO) Program. Led by Lucy Lim at NASA Goddard, this project aims to develop an instrument to probe asteroid and comet constituents in space.
In addition, Advanced Nanophotonics worked with researcher Larry Hess at NASA Goddard’s Detector Systems Branch and Jing Li at the NASA Ames Research Center to develop a breathalyzer to screen for Covid-19 using carbon nanotube technology. The electron mobility in a carbon nanotube network enables high sensitivity to gases in exhaled breath that are associated with disease.
This carbon nanotube-based technology is paying dividends both in space, as we continue our search for life, and here on Earth.
For additional details, see the entry for this project on NASA TechPort.
PROJECT LEAD
John Hagopian (Advanced Nanophotonics, LLC)
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION
SMD-funded SBIR project
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Last Updated Sep 03, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
The stars in the big Wyoming skies inspired Aaron Vigil as a child to dream big. Today, he’s a mechanical engineer working on the Solar Array Sun Shield (SASS) for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope at Goddard.
Name: Aaron Vigil
Title: Mechanical Engineer
Formal Job Classification: Aerospace Technology, Flight Structures
Organization: Mechanical Engineering, Engineering and Technology Directorate (Code 543)
Aaron Vigil is a mechanical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Photo courtesy of Aaron Vigil What do you do and what is most interesting about your role here at Goddard? How do you help support Goddard’s mission?
I currently work on the Solar Array Sun Shield (SASS) for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. I support daily integration and testing tasks related to the SASS assembly. I spend a lot of my time working with Goddard mechanical technicians and other engineers to execute test plans and procedures to assemble, test, and integrate SASS hardware.
What interests you about space?
I grew up in rural Wyoming. I did a lot of hiking, hunting, fishing, and camping. We were on the mountains constantly. I remember being up at night, sitting around the campfire with my family, looking up at the stars.
I was fascinated and captivated! I wanted to learn more about space.
“I currently work on the Solar Array Sun Shield (SASS) for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope,” said Aaron. “I support daily integration and testing tasks related to the SASS assembly.”Photo credit: NASA/Chris Gunn What brought you to Goddard?
In 2019, I began a B.S. in mechanical engineering at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
In the spring of 2020, I reached out to an organization at the University of Wyoming looking for opportunities to further my education in the field of aerospace. They introduced me to the Wyoming Space Grand Consortium and, through their website, I learned of and applied to be a NASA Office of STEM Engagement intern in the spring of 2021. I received an offer and, in the summer of 2021, began working as a remote intern at Goddard on the 3D modeling and rendering of early spacecraft.
How did the Hispanic Advisory Committee for Employees (HACE) introduce you to the Pathways Program?
The summer of 2021, the different employee advisory committees at Goddard held presentations for the interns. I am Hispanic; I naturally gravitated towards HACE and fell in love with the extremely warm community they provided.
I attended their monthly meetings and I presented to the center at their end of the summer intern presentation. HACE introduced me to the Pathways Program, and the organization was instrumental in my becoming a Pathways student intern. This Pathways internship eventually led to my conversion to a fulltime employee and my current position in the Mechanical Engineering Branch here at Goddard.
What one piece of advice would you give to a new intern?
Never be afraid to ask questions and always seek out new connections. Goddard is a well of knowledge, you can learn and grow a lot from those around you.
Tell us about your mentorship at Goddard.
Jack Marshall is an aerospace engineer and the lead for SASS. When I was an intern, he showed me a glimpse into the world of engineering, providing perspective on all aspects of the project from administrative to technical. He continues to guide my engineering journey and has been instrumental in developing me into the engineer I am today. I am incredibly grateful to Jack for his welcome and his guidance.
What is the coolest part about your job?
The best parts about my job are the people I get to work with and the hardware we get to build. Whether we’re in a small lab in Goddard’s integration and testing facility or a large clean room, I get to spend most of my days working with incredible people to build, test, and integrate flight hardware. Every day there is something to be excited about and someone I get to work with who is likely to teach me something new. That excitement makes my work fun.
It’s also fun to work in facilities like the largest clean room at Goddard, where the James Webb Space Telescope was built. It was interesting getting used to being gowned up. You start with removing electronics and putting on a face mask, hair net, and shoe covers, before taking a quick air shower. Next comes the hood, coveralls, and boots, before taping your gloves and finally entering the clean room.
Related: Solar Panels for NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Pass Key Tests “Whether we’re in a small lab in Goddard’s integration and testing facility or a large clean room, I get to spend most of my days working with incredible people to build, test, and integrate flight hardware,” said Aaron. “Every day there is something to be excited about and someone I get to work with who is likely to teach me something new.”Photo credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya What do you hope to be doing in five years?
I would hope to have the opportunity to continue learning and working here at Goddard. I love what I do, and I hope to help others interested, find a similar path to NASA.
What do you do fun?
I still love to go fishing and hiking any chance I get and have been looking forward to doing more here in Maryland. Since moving to the area, I have also been enjoying attending Nationals baseball games in D.C., and I have been looking for opportunities to continuing to play music since graduating college.
Aaron Vigil plays the sousaphone at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Photo courtesy of Aaron Vigil Who inspires you?
My biggest inspirations have been my parents and grandparents, without them I would not be where I am today. I cannot thank them enough. They provided me my foundation and have supported me throughout my life, encouraging me to never give up. They have always had my back.
I also want to thank my Wyoming community where I grew up and my early mentors within that community.
What is your “six-word memoir”? A six-word memoir describes something in just six words.
Grounded by roots, but always growing.
By Elizabeth M. Jarrell
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Conversations With Goddard is a collection of Q&A profiles highlighting the breadth and depth of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s talented and diverse workforce. The Conversations have been published twice a month on average since May 2011. Read past editions on Goddard’s “Our People” webpage.
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Last Updated Aug 29, 2024 EditorMadison OlsonContactRob Garnerrob.garner@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
People of Goddard Goddard Space Flight Center Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope People of NASA Explore More
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By NASA
A galactic halo is a loose collection of stars that extends 15 to 20 times beyond the radius of the brightest part of the galaxy. One of the few galaxies with a well-studied stellar halo is our neighbor, Andromeda, depicted here in the graphic. The stellar halo is illustrated with exaggerated brightness and density to show how far it extends. When the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launches, it will be able to use its wide field of view to comprehensively image many more stellar halos of more distant galaxies.
NASA, Ralf Crawford (STScI) The universe is a dynamic, ever-changing place where galaxies are dancing, merging together, and shifting appearance. Unfortunately, because these changes take millions or billions of years, telescopes can only provide snapshots, squeezed into a human lifetime.
However, galaxies leave behind clues to their history and how they came to be. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have the capacity to look for these fossils of galaxy formation with high-resolution imaging of galaxies in the nearby universe.
Astronomers, through a grant from NASA, are designing a set of possible observations called RINGS (the Roman Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey) that would collect these remarkable images, and the team is producing publicly available tools that the astronomy community can use once Roman launches and starts taking data. The RINGS survey is a preliminary concept that may or may not be implemented during Roman’s science mission.
Roman is uniquely prepared for RINGS due to its resolution akin to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and its wide field of view – – 200 times that of Hubble in the infrared – – making it a sky survey telescope that complements Hubble’s narrow-field capabilities.
Galactic Archaeologists
Scientists can only look at brief instances in the lives of evolving galaxies that eventually lead to the fully formed galaxies around us today. As a result, galaxy formation can be difficult to track.
Luckily, galaxies leave behind hints of their evolution in their stellar structures, almost like how organisms on Earth can leave behind imprints in rock. These galactic “fossils” are groups of ancient stars that hold the history of the galaxy’s formation and evolution, including the chemistry of the galaxy when those stars formed.
These cosmic fossils are of particular interest to Robyn Sanderson, the deputy principal investigator of RINGS at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. She describes the process of analyzing stellar structures in galaxies as “like going through an excavation and trying to sort out bones and put them back together.”
Roman’s high resolution will allow scientists to pick out these galactic fossils, using structures ranging from long tidal tails on a galaxy’s outskirts to stellar streams within the galaxy. These large-scale structures, which Roman is uniquely capable of capturing, can give clues to a galaxy’s merger history. The goal, says Sanderson, is to “reassemble these fossils in order to look back in time and understand how these galaxies came to be.”
Shedding Light on Dark Matter
RINGS will also enable further investigations of one of the most mysterious substances in the universe: dark matter, an invisible form of matter that makes up most of a galaxy’s mass. A particularly useful class of objects for testing dark matter theories are ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. According to Raja GuhaThakurta of the University of California, Santa Cruz, “Ultra faint dwarf galaxies are so dark matter-dominated that they have very little normal matter for star formation. With so few stars being created, ultra-faint galaxies can essentially be seen as pure blobs of dark matter to study.”
Roman, thanks to its large field of view and high resolution, will observe these ultra-faint galaxies to help test multiple theories of dark matter. With these new data, the astronomical community will come closer to finding the truth about this unobservable dark matter that vastly outweighs visible matter: dark matter makes up about 80% of the universe’s matter while normal matter comprises the remaining 20%.
Ultra-faint galaxies are far from the only test of dark matter. Often, just looking in an average-sized galaxy’s backyard is enough. Structures in the halo of stars surrounding a galaxy often give hints to the amount of dark matter present. However, due to the sheer size of galactic halos (they are often 15-20 times as big as the galaxy itself), current telescopes are deeply inefficient at observing them.
At the moment, the only fully resolved galactic halos scientists have to go on are our own Milky Way and Andromeda, our neighbor galaxy. Ben Williams, the principal investigator of RINGS at the University of Washington in Seattle, describes how Roman’s power will amend this problem: “We only have reliable measurements of the Milky Way and Andromeda, because those are close enough that we can get measurements of a large number of stars distributed across their stellar halos. So, with Roman, all of a sudden we’ll have 100 or more of these fully resolved galaxies.”
When Roman launches by May 2027, it is expected to fundamentally alter how scientists understand galaxies. In the process, it will shed some light on our own home galaxy. The Milky Way is easy to study up close, but we do not have a large enough selfie stick to take a photo of our entire galaxy and its surrounding halo. RINGS shows what Roman is capable of should such a survey be approved. By studying the nearby universe, RINGS can examine galaxies similar in size and age to the Milky Way, and shed light on how we came to be here.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with participation by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech/IPAC in Southern California, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and a science team comprising scientists from various research institutions. The primary industrial partners are BAE Systems, Inc in Boulder, Colorado; L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging in Thousand Oaks, California.
By Patt Molinari
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Media contact:
Claire Andreoli
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940
Ann Jenkins
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated Aug 29, 2024 EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Dark Matter Galaxies Stars The Universe View the full article
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By NASA
Both versions of the Solar Array Sun Shield for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope appear in this photo, taken in the largest clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The flight version lies flat in the foreground, while the qualification assembly stands upright in the background. The flight panels will shade the mission’s instruments and power the observatory. NASA/Chris Gunn NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Solar Array Sun Shield has successfully completed recent tests, signaling that the assembly is on track to be completed on schedule. The panels are designed to power and shade the observatory, enabling all the mission’s observations and helping keep the instruments cool.
The Roman team has two sets of these panels –– one that will fly aboard the observatory and another as a test structure, used specifically for preliminary assessments.
Engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, evaluated the test version in a thermal vacuum chamber, which simulates the hot and cold temperatures and low-pressure environment the flight panels will experience in space. Since the panels will be stowed for launch, the team practiced deploying them in space-like conditions.
The solar panels for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope are undergoing assessment in a test chamber at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in this photo.NASA/Chris Gunn Meanwhile, a vendor built up the flight version by fitting the panels with solar cells. After delivery to Goddard, technicians tested the solar cells by flashing the panels with a bright light that simulates the Sun.
“We save a significant amount of time and money by using two versions of the panels, because we can do a lot of preliminary tests on a spare while moving further in the process with the flight version,” said Jack Marshall, the Solar Array Sun Shield lead at NASA Goddard. “It streamlines the process and also avoids risking damage to the panels that will go on the observatory, should testing reveal a flaw.”
Next spring, the flight version of the Solar Array Sun Shield will be installed on the Roman spacecraft. Then, the whole spacecraft will go through thorough testing to ensure it will hold up during launch and perform as expected in space.
To virtually tour an interactive version of the telescope, visit:
https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/interactive
By Ashley Balzer
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Media contact:
Claire Andreoli
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-1940
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Last Updated Aug 26, 2024 EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Goddard Space Flight Center Science-enabling Technology Space Communications Technology View the full article
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