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By NASA
This enormous piece of space hardware is NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s spacecraft bus, which will maneuver the observatory to its place in space and enable it to function while there. It is photographed here in the largest clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where engineers are inspecting it upon delivery. The bus rests atop an aluminum ring that will temporarily protect its underside. The two copper-colored flaps are Roman’s Lower Instrument Sun Shade –– deployable panels designed to help shield the observatory from sunlight.NASA/Chris Gunn The spacecraft bus that will deliver NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope to its orbit and enable it to function once there is now complete after years of construction, installation, and testing.
Now that the spacecraft is assembled, engineers will begin working to integrate the observatory’s other major components, including the science instruments and the telescope itself.
“They call it a spacecraft bus for a reason — it gets the telescope to where it needs to be in space,” said Jackie Townsend, the Roman deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “But it’s really more like an RV because it has a whole assortment of functions that enable Roman to accomplish its scientific goals while out there too.”
Those goals include surveying wide swaths of the universe to study things like: dark energy, a mysterious cosmic pressure thought to accelerate the universe’s expansion; dark matter, invisible matter seen only via its gravitational influence; and exoplanets, worlds beyond our solar system.
The mission’s science wouldn’t be possible without a spacecraft to transport the telescope, point the observatory toward different cosmic targets, provide power, communicate with Earth, control and store instrument data, and regulate Roman’s temperature. Nearly 50 miles of electrical cabling are laced throughout the assembly to enable different parts of the observatory to communicate with each other.
The spacecraft will also deploy several major elements that will be stowed for launch, including the solar panels, deployable aperture cover, lower instrument Sun shade, and high-gain antenna. It’s also responsible for collecting and beaming down data, which is no small task for a space observatory that will survey the cosmos like Roman will.
“Roman will send back 1.4 terabytes of data per day, compared to about 50 to 60 gigabytes from the James Webb Space Telescope and three gigabytes from the Hubble Space Telescope,” said Jason Hylan, the Roman observatory manager at NASA Goddard. “Webb’s daily downlink is roughly comparable to 13 hours of YouTube video at the highest quality while Roman’s would amount to about 2 weeks.”
This top-down view shows NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s spacecraft bus from another angle. It rests atop an aluminum ring that will not be part of the observatory and is surrounded by an enclosure used in testing to ensure electromagnetic interference will not affect the bus’s sensitive electronics. The bus is covered in gray bagging material to prevent contamination –– even tiny stray particles could affect its performance.NASA/Chris Gunn A Goddard Grand Slam
This milestone is the culmination of eight years of spacecraft design work, building, and testing by hundreds of people at Goddard.
“Goddard employees were the brains, designers, and executors. And they worked with vendors who supplied all the right parts,” Townsend said. “We leaned on generations of expertise in the spacecraft arena to work around cost and schedule challenges that arose from supply chain issues and the pandemic.”
One time- and money-saving technique the team came up with was building a spacecraft mockup, called the structural verification unit. That allowed them to do two things at once: complete strength testing on the mockup, designed specifically for that purpose, while also assembling the actual spacecraft.
The spacecraft’s clever layout also allowed the team to adapt to changing schedules. It’s designed to be modular, “more like Trivial Pursuit pie pieces than a nesting egg, where interior components are buried inside,” Townsend said. “That’s been a game-changer because you can’t always count on things arriving in the order you planned or working perfectly right away with no tweaks.” It also increased efficiency because people could work on different portions of the bus at the same time without interfering with each other.
The slightly asymmetrical and hexagonal spacecraft bus is about 13 feet (4 meters) wide by 6.5 feet (2 meters) tall and weighs in at 8,400 pounds (3,800 kilograms).
While it may look small in this photo, the spacecraft bus for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is 8 feet (2.5 meters) wide by 6.5 feet (2 meters) tall and weighs in at 8,400 pounds (3,800 kilograms). In this photo, it rests atop an aluminum ring that will not be part of the observatory. The bundles of wires on top are part of more than 50 miles of cabling laced throughout the assembly to enable different parts of the observatory to communicate with each other.NASA/Chris Gunn One reason it doesn’t weigh more is that some components have been partially hollowed out. If you could peel back some of the spacecraft’s panels, you’d find superthin metallic honeycomb sandwiched between two slim layers of metal. And many of the components, such as the antenna dish, are made of strong yet lightweight composite materials.
When the spacecraft bus was fully assembled, engineers conducted a comprehensive performance test. Prior to this, each component had been tested individually, but just like with a sports team, the whole unit has to perform well together.
“The spacecraft passed the test, and now we’re getting ready to install the payload –– Roman’s instruments and the telescope itself,” said Missie Vess, a spacecraft systems engineer for Roman at NASA Goddard. “Next year, we’ll test these systems together and begin integrating the final components of the observatory, including the deployable aperture cover, outer barrel assembly, and solar panels. Then we’ll finally have ourselves a complete observatory, on track for launch by May 2027.”
To virtually tour an interactive version of the telescope, visit:
https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/interactive
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 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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Article 3 weeks ago 6 min read Primary Instrument for Roman Space Telescope Arrives at NASA Goddard
Article 1 month ago 6 min read How NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Will Illuminate Cosmic Dawn
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Last Updated Sep 17, 2024 EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Communicating and Navigating with Missions Dark Energy Dark Matter Exoplanets Goddard Space Flight Center Goddard Technology Space Communications Technology Technology The Universe View the full article
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By NASA
NASA and Boeing welcomed Starliner back to Earth following the uncrewed spacecraft’s successful landing at 10:01 p.m. MDT Sept. 6, 2024, at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico. Credit: NASA NASA and Boeing safely returned the uncrewed Starliner spacecraft following its landing at 10:01 p.m. MDT Sept. 6 at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, concluding a three-month flight test to the International Space Station.
“I am extremely proud of the work our collective team put into this entire flight test, and we are pleased to see Starliner’s safe return,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator, Space Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Even though it was necessary to return the spacecraft uncrewed, NASA and Boeing learned an incredible amount about Starliner in the most extreme environment possible. NASA looks forward to our continued work with the Boeing team to proceed toward certification of Starliner for crew rotation missions to the space station.”
The flight on June 5 was the first time astronauts launched aboard the Starliner. It was the third orbital flight of the spacecraft, and its second return from the orbiting laboratory. Starliner now will ship to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for inspection and processing.
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program requires a spacecraft to fly a crewed test flight to prove the system is ready for regular flights to and from the orbiting laboratory. Following Starliner’s return, the agency will review all mission-related data.
“We are excited to have Starliner home safely. This was an important test flight for NASA in setting us up for future missions on the Starliner system,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “There was a lot of valuable learning that will enable our long-term success. I want to commend the entire team for their hard work and dedication over the past three months.”
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams launched on June 5 aboard Starliner for the agency’s Boeing Crewed Flight Test from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. On June 6, as Starliner approached the space station, NASA and Boeing identified helium leaks and experienced issues with the spacecraft’s reaction control thrusters. Following weeks of in-space and ground testing, technical interchange meetings, and agency reviews, NASA made the decision to prioritize safety and return Starliner without its crew. Wilmore and Williams will continue their work aboard station as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew, returning in February 2025 with the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission.
The crew flight test is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The goal of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program is safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the International Space Station and low Earth orbit. This already is providing additional research time and has increased the opportunity for discovery aboard humanity’s microgravity testbed, including helping NASA prepare for human exploration of the Moon and Mars.
Learn more about NASA’s Commercial Crew program at:
https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
-end-
Joshua Finch / Jimi Russell
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov / james.j.russell@nasa.gov
Leah Cheshier
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
leah.d.cheshier@nasa.gov
Steve Siceloff / Danielle Sempsrott / Stephanie Plucinsky
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-867-2468
steven.p.siceloff@nasa.gov / danielle.c.sempsrott@nasa.gov / stephanie.n.plucinsky@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Sep 07, 2024 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Commercial Crew International Space Station (ISS) ISS Research View the full article
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By NASA
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and leadership host a live news conference on Saturday, Aug. 24 at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to give a status update about NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test.Credit: NASA NASA will return Boeing’s Starliner to Earth without astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the spacecraft, the agency announced Saturday. The uncrewed return allows NASA and Boeing to continue gathering testing data on Starliner during its upcoming flight home, while also not accepting more risk than necessary for its crew.
Wilmore and Williams, who flew to the International Space Station in June aboard NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, have been busy supporting station research, maintenance, and Starliner system testing and data analysis, among other activities.
“Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and most routine. A test flight, by nature, is neither safe, nor routine. The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value and our North Star,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “I’m grateful to both the NASA and Boeing teams for all their incredible and detailed work.”
Wilmore and Williams will continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew through February 2025. They will fly home aboard a Dragon spacecraft with two other crew members assigned to the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission. Starliner is expected to depart from the space station and make a safe, controlled autonomous re-entry and landing in early September.
NASA and Boeing identified helium leaks and experienced issues with the spacecraft reaction control thrusters on June 6 as Starliner approached the space station. Since then, engineering teams have completed a significant amount of work, including reviewing a collection of data, conducting flight and ground testing, hosting independent reviews with agency propulsion experts, and developing various return contingency plans. The uncertainty and lack of expert concurrence does not meet the agency’s safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight, thus prompting NASA leadership to move the astronauts to the Crew-9 mission.
“Decisions like this are never easy, but I want to commend our NASA and Boeing teams for their thorough analysis, transparent discussions, and focus on safety during the Crew Flight Test,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate. “We’ve learned a lot about the spacecraft during its journey to the station and its docked operations. We also will continue to gather more data about Starliner during the uncrewed return and improve the system for future flights to the space station.”
NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts (from top) Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams pose on June 13, 2024 for a portrait inside the vestibule between the forward port on the International Space Station’s Harmony module and Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.Credit: NASA Starliner is designed to operate autonomously and previously completed two uncrewed flights. NASA and Boeing will work together to adjust end-of-mission planning and Starliner’s systems to set up for the uncrewed return in the coming weeks. Starliner must return to Earth before the Crew-9 mission launches to ensure a docking port is available on station.
“Starliner is a very capable spacecraft and, ultimately, this comes down to needing a higher level of certainty to perform a crewed return,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. “The NASA and Boeing teams have completed a tremendous amount of testing and analysis, and this flight test is providing critical information on Starliner’s performance in space. Our efforts will help prepare for the uncrewed return and will greatly benefit future corrective actions for the spacecraft.”
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program requires spacecraft fly a crewed test flight to prove the system is ready for regular flights to and from the space station. Following Starliner’s return, the agency will review all mission-related data to inform what additional actions are required to meet NASA’s certification requirements.
The agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission, originally slated with four crew members, will launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 24. The agency will share more information about the Crew-9 complement when details are finalized.
NASA and SpaceX currently are working several items before launch, including reconfiguring seats on the Crew-9 Dragon, and adjusting the manifest to carry additional cargo, personal effects, and Dragon-specific spacesuits for Wilmore and Williams. In addition, NASA and SpaceX now will use new facilities at Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida to launch Crew-9, which provides increased operational flexibility around NASA’s planned Europa Clipper launch.
The Crew-9 mission will be the ninth rotational mission to the space station under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, which works with the American aerospace industry to meet the goal of safe, reliable, and cost-effective transportation to and from the orbital outpost on American-made rockets and spacecraft launching from American soil.
For more than two decades, people have lived and worked continuously aboard the International Space Station, advancing scientific knowledge and demonstrating new technologies, making research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The station is a critical testbed for NASA to understand and overcome the challenges of long-duration spaceflight and to expand commercial opportunities in low Earth orbit. As commercial companies focus on providing human space transportation services and destinations as part of a robust low Earth orbit economy, NASA’s Artemis campaign is underway at the Moon where the agency is preparing for future human exploration of Mars.
Find more information on NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at:
https://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew
-end-
Meira Bernstein / Josh Finch
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
meira.b.bernstein@nasa.gov / joshua.a.finch@nasa.gov
Steve Siceloff / Danielle Sempsrott / Stephanie Plucinsky
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-867-2468
steven.p.siceloff@nasa.gov / danielle.c.sempsrott@nasa.gov / stephanie.n.plucinsky@nasa.gov
Leah Cheshier / Sandra Jones
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
leah.d.cheshier@nasa.gov / sandra.p.jones@nasa.gov
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Last Updated Aug 24, 2024 EditorJessica TaveauLocationNASA Headquarters Related Terms
Commercial Crew International Space Station (ISS) View the full article
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By European Space Agency
ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft has provided crucial data to answer the decades-long question of where the energy comes from to heat and accelerate the solar wind. Working in tandem with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter reveals that the energy needed to help power this outflow is coming from large fluctuations in the Sun’s magnetic field.
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By NASA
5 min read
How Students Learn to Fly NASA’s IXPE Spacecraft
Amelia “Mia” De Herrera-Schnering is an undergraduate student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and command controller for NASA’s IXPE mission at LASP. The large wall monitor displaying a countdown shows 17 seconds when Amelia “Mia” De Herrera-Schnering tells her teammates “We have AOS,” meaning “acquisition of signal.”
“Copy that, thank you,” Alexander Pichler replies. The two are now in contact with NASA’s IXPE (Imaging X-Ray Polarimeter Explorer) spacecraft, transmitting science data from IXPE to a ground station and making sure the download goes smoothly. That data will then go to the science team for further analysis.
At LASP, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, students at the University of Colorado, Boulder, can train to become command controllers, working directly with spacecraft on pointing the satellites, calibrating instruments, and collecting data. De Herrera-Schnering recently completed her sophomore year, while Pichler had trained as a student and now, having graduated, works as a full-time professional at LASP.
“The students are a key part in what we do,” said Stephanie Ruswick, IXPE flight director at LASP. “We professionals monitor the health and safety of the spacecraft, but so do the students, and they do a lot of analysis for us.”
Students also put into motion IXPE’s instrument activity plans, which are provided by the Science Operations Center at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The LASP student team schedules contacts with ground stations to downlink data, schedules observations of scientific and calibration targets, and generates the files necessary to translate the scientific operations into spacecraft actions. If IXPE experiences an anomaly, the LASP team will implement plans to remediate and resume normal operations as soon as possible.
Exploring the high-energy universe
The students take part in IXPE’s exploration of a wide variety of celestial targets. In October, for example, students monitored the transmission of data from IXPE’s observations of Swift J1727.8-1613, a bright black hole X-ray binary system. This cosmic object had been recently discovered in September 2023, when NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory detected a gamma-ray burst. IXPE’s specialized instruments allow scientists to measure the polarization of X-rays, which contains information about the source of the X-rays as well as the organization of surrounding magnetic fields. IXPE’s follow-up of the Swift object exemplifies how multiple space missions often combine their individual strengths to paint a fuller scientific picture of distant phenomena.
Team members also conduct individual projects. For example, students analyzed how IXPE would fare during both the annular eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023, and the total eclipse that moved across North America on April 8, to make sure that the spacecraft would have adequate power while the Moon partially blocked the Sun.
While most of the students working on IXPE at LASP are engineering majors, some are physics or astrophysics majors. Some didn’t initially start their careers in STEM such as flight controller Kacie Davis, who previously studied art.
Prospective command controllers go through a rigorous 12-week summer training program working 40 hours per week, learning “everything there is to know about mission operations and how to fly a spacecraft,” Ruswick said.
Cole Writer, an aerospace engineering student, remembers this training as “nerve-wracking” because he felt intimidated by the flight controllers. But after practicing procedures on his own laptop, he felt more confident, and completed the program to become a command controller.
“It’s nice to be trained by other students who are in the same boat as you and have gone through the same process,” said Adrienne Pickerill, a flight controller who started with the team as a student and earned a Master’s in aerospace engineering at the university in May .
Sam Lippincott, right, a graduate student lead at LASP, trained as a command controller for NASA’s IXPE spacecraft as an undergraduate. In the background are flight controllers Adrienne Pickerill, left, and Alexander Pichler, who also trained as students. How they got here
As a teenager Writer’s interests focused on flying planes, and he saved money to train for a pilot’s license, earning it the summer after high school graduation. Surprisingly, he has found many overlaps in skills for both activities – following checklists and preventing mistakes. “Definitely high stakes in both cases,” he said.
Sam Lippincott, now a graduate student lead after serving as a command controller as an undergraduate, has been a lifelong sci-fi fan, but took a career in space more seriously his sophomore year of college. “For people that want to go into the aerospace or space operations industry, it’s always important to remember that you’ll never stop learning, and it’s important to remain humble in your abilities, and always be excited to learn more,” he said.
De Herrera-Schnering got hooked on the idea of becoming a scientist the first time she saw the Milky Way. On a camping trip when she was 10 years old, she spotted the galaxy as she went to use the outhouse in the middle of the night. “I woke up my parents, and we just laid outside and we were just stargazing,” she said. “After that I knew I was set on what I wanted to do.”
Rithik Gangopadhyay, who trained as an undergraduate command controller and continued at LASP as a graduate student lead, had been interested in puzzles and problem-solving as a kid and had a book about planets that fascinated him.. “There’s so much out there and so much we don’t know, and I think that’s what really pushed me to do aerospace and do this opportunity of being a command controller,” he said.
Coding is key to mission operations, and much of it is done in the Python language. Sometimes the work of flying a spacecraft feels like any other kind of programming — but occasionally, team members step back and consider that they are part of the grand mission of exploring the universe.
“If it’s your job for a couple of years, it starts to be like, ‘oh, let’s go ahead and do that, it’s just another Tuesday.’ But if you step back and think about it on a high-level basis, it’s really something special,” Pichler said. “It’s definitely profound.”
Media Contact
Elizabeth Landau
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0845
elandau@nasa.gov
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