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By NASA
This photo shows the Wide Field Instrument for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope arriving at the big clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. About the size of a commercial refrigerator, this instrument will help astronomers explore the universe’s evolution and the characteristics of worlds outside our solar system. Unlocking these cosmic mysteries and more will offer a better understanding of the nature of the universe and our place within it.NASA/Chris Gunn The primary instrument for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a sophisticated camera that will survey the cosmos from the outskirts of our solar system all the way out to the edge of the observable universe. Called the Wide Field Instrument, it was recently delivered to the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The camera’s large field of view, sharp resolution, and sensitivity from visible to near-infrared wavelengths will give Roman a deep, panoramic view of the universe. Scanning much larger portions of the sky than astronomers can with NASA’s Hubble or James Webb space telescopes will open new avenues of cosmic exploration. Roman is designed to study 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).
“This instrument will turn signals from space into a new understanding of how our universe works,” said Julie McEnery, the Roman senior project scientist at Goddard. “To achieve its main goals, the mission will precisely measure hundreds of millions of galaxies. That’s quite a dataset for all kinds of researchers to pull from, so there will be a flood of results on a vast array of science.”
Technicians inspect NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Wide Field Instrument upon delivery to the big clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.NASA/Chris Gunn About 1,000 people contributed to the Wide Field Instrument’s development, from the initial design phase to assembling it from around a million individual components. The WFI’s design was a collaborative effort between Goddard and BAE Systems in Boulder, Colorado. Teledyne Imaging Sensors, Hawaii Aerospace Corporation, Applied Aerospace Structures Corporation, Northrop Grumman, Honeybee Robotics, CDA Intercorp, Alluxa, and JenOptik provided critical components. Those parts and many more, made by other vendors, were delivered to Goddard and BAE Systems, where they were assembled and tested prior to the instrument’s delivery to Goddard this month.
“I am so happy to be delivering this amazing instrument,” said Mary Walker, Roman’s Wide Field Instrument manager at Goddard. “All the years of hard work and the team’s dedication have brought us to this exciting moment.”
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a next-generation observatory that will survey the infrared universe from beyond the orbit of the Moon. The spacecraft’s giant camera, the Wide Field Instrument, will be fundamental to this exploration. Data it gathers will enable scientists to discover new and uniquely detailed information about planetary systems around other stars. The instrument will also map how matter is structured and distributed throughout the cosmos, which could ultimately allow scientists to discover the fate of the universe. Watch this video to see a simplified version of how the Wide Field Instrument works.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Seeing the Bigger Picture
After Roman launches by May 2027, each of the Wide Field Instrument’s 300-million-pixel images will capture a patch of the sky bigger than the apparent size of a full moon. The instrument’s large field of view will enable sweeping celestial surveys, revealing billions of cosmic objects across vast stretches of time and space. Astronomers will conduct research that could take hundreds of years using other telescopes.
And by observing from space, Roman’s camera will be very sensitive to infrared light –– light with longer wavelengths than our eyes can see –– from far across the cosmos. This ancient cosmic light will help scientists address some of the biggest cosmic mysteries, one of which is how the universe evolved to its present state.
From the telescope, light’s path through the instrument begins by passing through one of several optical elements in a large wheel. These elements include filters, which allow specific wavelengths of light to pass through, and a grism and prism, which split light into all of its individual colors. These detailed patterns, called spectra, reveal information about the object that emitted the light.
Then, the light travels on toward the camera’s set of 18 detectors, which each contain 16 million pixels. The large number of detectors and pixels gives Roman its large field of view. The instrument is designed for accurate, stable images and exquisite precision in measuring the exact amount of light in every pixel of every image, giving Roman unprecedented power to study dark energy. The detectors will be held at about minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 184 degrees Celsius) to increase sensitivity to the infrared universe.
“When the light reaches the detectors, that marks the end of what may have been a 10-billion-year journey through space,” said Art Whipple, an aerospace engineer at Goddard who has contributed to the Wide Field Instrument’s design and construction for more than a decade.
Once Roman begins observing, its rapid data delivery will require new analysis techniques.
“If we had every astronomer on Earth working on Roman data, there still wouldn’t be nearly enough people to go through it all,” McEnery said. “We’re looking at modern techniques like machine learning and artificial intelligence to help sift through Roman’s observations and find where the most exciting things are.”
Now that the Wide Field Instrument is at Goddard, it will be tested to ensure everything is operating as expected. It will be integrated onto the instrument carrier and mated to the telescope this fall, bringing scientists one step closer to making groundbreaking discoveries for decades to come.
One panel on the Wide Field Instrument for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope contains hundreds of names of team members who helped design and build the instrument.BAE Systems 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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Last Updated Aug 13, 2024 EditorAshley BalzerContactAshley Balzerashley.m.balzer@nasa.govLocationGoddard Space Flight Center Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
As ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence completes its pre-launch testing, its target asteroids have come into focus as tiny worldlets of their own. A special issue of Nature Communications published this week presents studies of the Didymos asteroid and its Dimorphos moon, based on the roughly five and a half minutes of close-range footage returned by NASA’s DART spacecraft before it impacted the latter body – along with post-impact images from the Italian Space Agency’s LICIACube.
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By NASA
5 min read
NASA’s DART Mission Sheds New Light on Target Binary Asteroid System
The various geological features observed on Didymos helped researchers tell the story of Didymos’ origins. The asteroid’s triangular ridge (first panel from left), and the so-called smooth region, and its likely older, rougher “highland” region (second panel from left) can be explained through a combination of slope processes controlled by elevation (third panel from left). The fourth panel shows the effects of spin-up disruption that Didymos likely underwent to form Dimorphos. Credit: Johns Hopkins APL/Olivier Barnouin In studying data collected from NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, which in 2022 sent a spacecraft to intentionally collide with the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, the mission’s science team has discovered new information on the origins of the target binary asteroid system and why the DART spacecraft was so effective in shifting Dimorphos’ orbit.
In five recently published papers in Nature Communications, the team explored the geology of the binary asteroid system, comprising moonlet Dimorphos and parent asteroid Didymos, to characterize its origin and evolution and constrain its physical characteristics.
“These findings give us new insights into the ways that asteroids can change over time,” said Thomas Statler, lead scientist for Solar System Small Bodies at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This is important not just for understanding the near-Earth objects that are the focus of planetary defense, but also for our ability to read the history of our Solar System from these remnants of planet formation. This is just part of the wealth of new knowledge we’ve gained from DART.”
Olivier Barnouin and Ronald-Louis Ballouz of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, led a paper that analyzed the geology of both asteroids and drew conclusions about their surface materials and interior properties. From images captured by DART and its accompanying LICIACube cubesat – contributed by the Italian Space Agency (ASI), the team observed the smaller asteroid Dimorphos’ topography, which featured boulders of varying sizes. In comparison, the larger asteroid Didymos was smoother at lower elevations, though rocky at higher elevations, with more craters than Dimorphos. The authors inferred that Dimorphos likely spun off from Didymos in a large mass shedding event.
There are natural processes that can accelerate the spins of small asteroids, and there is growing evidence that these processes may be responsible for re-shaping these bodies or even forcing material to be spun off their surfaces.
Analysis suggested that both Didymos and Dimorphos have weak surface characteristics, which led the team to posit that Didymos has a surface age 40–130 times older than Dimorphos, with the former estimated to be 12.5 million years and the latter less than 300,000 years old. The low surface strength of Dimorphos likely contributed to DART’s significant impact on its orbit.
“The images and data that DART collected at the Didymos system provided a unique opportunity for a close-up geological look of a near-Earth asteroid binary system,” said Barnouin. “From these images alone, we were able to infer a great deal of information on geophysical properties of both Didymos and Dimorphos and expand our understanding on the formation of these two asteroids. We also better understand why DART was so effective in moving Dimorphos.”
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Based on the internal and surface properties described in Barnouin et al. (2024), this video demonstrates how the spin-up of asteroid Didymos could have led to the growth of its equatorial ridge and the formation of the smaller asteroid Dimorphos, seen orbiting the former near the end of the clip. Particles are colored according to their speeds, with the scale shown at the top, along with the continually changing spin period of Didymos. Credit: University of Michigan/Yun Zhang and Johns Hopkins APL/Olivier Barnouin Maurizio Pajola, of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Rome, and co-authors led a paper comparing the shapes and sizes of the various boulders and their distribution patterns on the two asteroids’ surfaces. They determined the physical characteristics of Dimorphos indicate it formed in stages, likely of material inherited from its parent asteroid Didymos. That conclusion reinforces the prevailing theory that some binary asteroid systems arise from shed remnants of a larger primary asteroid accumulating into a new asteroid moonlet.
Alice Lucchetti, also of INAF, and colleagues found that thermal fatigue — the gradual weakening and cracking of a material caused by heat — could rapidly break up boulders on the surface of Dimorphos, generating surface lines and altering the physical characteristics of this type of asteroid more quickly than previously thought. The DART mission was likely the first observation of such a phenomenon on this type of asteroid.
Supervised by researcher Naomi Murdoch of ISAE-SUPAERO in Toulouse, France, and colleagues, a paper led by students Jeanne Bigot and Pauline Lombardo determined Didymos’ bearing capacity — the surface’s ability to support applied loads — to be at least 1,000 times lower than that of dry sand on Earth or lunar soil. This is considered an important parameter for understanding and predicting the response of a surface, including for the purposes of displacing an asteroid.
Colas Robin, also of ISAE-SUPAERO, and co-authors analyzed the surface boulders on Dimorphos, comparing them with those on other rubble pile asteroids, including Itokawa, Ryugu and Bennu. The researchers found the boulders shared similar characteristics, suggesting all these types of asteroids formed and evolved in a similar fashion. The team also noted that the elongated nature of the boulders around the DART impact site implies that they were likely formed through impact processing.
These latest findings form a more robust overview of the origins of the Didymos system and add to the understanding of how such planetary bodies were formed. As ESA’s (European Space Agency) Hera mission prepares to revisit DART’s collision site in 2026 to further analyze the aftermath of the first-ever planetary defense test, this research provides a series of tests for what Hera will find and contributes to current and future exploration missions while bolstering planetary defense capabilities.
Johns Hopkins APL managed the DART mission for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office. NASA provided support for the mission from several centers, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Johnson Space Center in Houston, Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
For more information about the DART mission:
https://science.nasa.gov/planetary-defense-dart
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Last Updated Jul 30, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
NASA Stennis Autonomous Systems Laboratory Project Engineer Travis Martin monitors successful data delivery from the center’s ASTRA payload aboard the orbiting Sidus Space LizzieSat-1 satellite. The ASTRA autonomous systems hardware/software payload represents the first-ever in-space mission for NASA Stennis. NASA/Danny Nowlin NASA’s Stennis Space Center and partner Sidus Space Inc. announced primary mission success July 2 for the center’s historic in-space mission – an autonomous systems payload aboard an orbiting satellite.
“Our ASTRA (Autonomous Satellite Technology for Resilient Applications) payload is active and operational,” NASA Stennis Center Director John Bailey said. “This is an incredible achievement for Stennis, our first-ever in-space mission flying on a new state-of-the-art satellite. We are all celebrating the news.”
ASTRA is the on-orbit payload mission developed by NASA Stennis and is an autonomous systems hardware/software payload. The NASA Stennis ASTRA technology demonstrator is a payload rider aboard the Sidus Space premier satellite, LizzieSat-1 (LS-1) small satellite. Partner Sidus Space is responsible for all LS-1 mission operations, including launch and satellite activation, which allowed the NASA Stennis ASTRA team to complete its primary mission objectives.
LS-1 launched into space on the SpaceX Transporter 10 rideshare mission March 4 and deployed the same day. The LS-1 satellite commissioning began after deployment and was completed on May 12. Sidus Space’s next step was to begin activation of payloads, including ASTRA.
After the payload was activated, the NASA Stennis Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL) team confirmed they had established a telemetry link to send and receive data in the ASTRA Payload Operation Command Center. The ASL team continued to checkout and verify operation of ASTRA and has confirmed that ASTRA primary mission objectives have been successfully achieved.
“This is just a remarkable and inspiring accomplishment for the entire team,” said Chris Carmichael, NASA Stennis ASL branch chief. “So many people put in a tremendous effort to bring us to this point. It is a great demonstration of the team’s vision and capabilities, and I am excited to see what the future holds.”
The NASA Stennis ASL works to create safe-by-design autonomous systems. ASTRA demonstrates technology that is required by NASA and industry for upcoming space missions. The ASTRA computer on the satellite runs a digital twin of satellite systems, which detects and identifies the causes of anomalies, and autonomously generates plans to resolve those issues. Ultimately, ASTRA will demonstrate autonomous operations of LS-1.
“Achieving ASTRA’s primary mission objectives underscores our dedication and commitment to driving innovation while advancing space technology alongside NASA, our trusted partner,” said Carol Craig, Founder and CEO of Sidus Space. “We are proud to support such groundbreaking projects in our industry and eagerly anticipate the continued progress of our LizzieSat-1 mission.”
The success of the ASTRA mission comes as NASA Stennis moves forward with strategic plans to design autonomous systems that will help accelerate development of intelligent aerospace systems and services for government and industry.
For information about NASA’s Stennis Space Center, visit:
Stennis Space Center – NASA
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Last Updated Jul 02, 2024 EditorNASA Stennis CommunicationsContactC. Lacy Thompsoncalvin.l.thompson@nasa.gov / (228) 688-3333LocationStennis Space Center Related Terms
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Perseverance captured this mosaic looking downstream of the dune-filled Neretva Vallis river channel on May 17. The channel fed Jezero Crater with fresh water billions of years ago.NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS Originally thought of as little more than a route clear of rover-slowing boulders, Neretva Vallis has provided a bounty of geologic options for the science team.
After detouring through a dune field to avoid wheel-rattling boulders, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover reached its latest area of scientific interest on June 9. The route change not only shortened the estimated drive time to reach that area — nicknamed “Bright Angel” — by several weeks, but also gave the science team an opportunity to find exciting geologic features in an ancient river channel.
Perseverance is in the later stages of its fourth science campaign, looking for evidence of carbonate and olivine deposits in the “Margin Unit,” an area along the inside of Jezero Crater’s rim. Located at the base of the northern channel wall, Bright Angel features rocky light-toned outcrops that may represent either ancient rock exposed by river erosion or sediments that filled the channel. The team hopes to find rocks different from those in the carbonate-and-olivine-rich Margin Unit and gather more clues about Jezero’s history.
Stitched together from 18 images taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover, this mosaic shows a boulder field on “Mount Washburn” on May 27. Intrigued by the diversity of textures and chemical composition in the light-toned boulder at center, the rover’s science team nicknamed the rock “Atoko Point.”NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS To get to Bright Angel, the rover drove on a ridge along the Neretva Vallis river channel, which billions of years ago carried a large amount of the water that flowed into Jezero Crater. “We started paralleling the channel in late January and were making pretty good progress, but then the boulders became bigger and more numerous,” said Evan Graser, Perseverance’s deputy strategic route planner lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “What had been drives averaging over a hundred meters per Martian day went down to only tens of meters. It was frustrating.”
Channel Surfing
In rough terrain, Evan and his team use rover imagery to plan drives of about 100 feet (30 meters) at a time. To go farther on any given Martian day, or sol, planners rely on Perseverance’s auto-navigation, or AutoNav, system to take over. But as the rocks became more plentiful, AutoNav would, more times than not, determine the going was not to its liking and stop, dimming the prospects of a timely arrival at Bright Angel. The team held out hope, however, knowing they might find success cutting across a quarter-mile (400-meter) dune field in the river channel.
NASA’s Perseverance rover was traveling in the ancient Neretva Vallis river channel when it captured this view of an area of scientific interest named “Bright Angel” — the light-toned area in the distance at right — with one of its navigation cameras on June 6.NASA/JPL-Caltech “We had been eyeing the river channel just to the north as we went, hoping to find a section where the dunes were small and far enough apart for a rover to pass between — because dunes have been known to eat Mars rovers,” said Graser. “Perseverance also needed an entrance ramp we could safely travel down. When the imagery showed both, we made a beeline for it.”
The Perseverance science team was also eager to travel through the ancient river channel because they wanted to investigate ancient Martian river processes.
Rock Star
With AutoNav helping guide the way on the channel floor, Perseverance covered the 656 feet (200 meters) to the first science stop in one sol. The target: “Mount Washburn,” a hill covered with intriguing boulders, some of a type never observed before on Mars.
Superimposed on an image from NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter, this map shows Perseverance’s path between Jan. 21 and June 11. White dots indicate where the rover stopped after completing a traverse beside Neretva Vallis river channel. The pale blue line indicates the rover’s route inside the channel.NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona “The diversity of textures and compositions at Mount Washburn was an exciting discovery for the team, as these rocks represent a grab bag of geologic gifts brought down from the crater rim and potentially beyond,” said Brad Garczynski of Western Washington University in Bellingham, the co-lead of the current science campaign.“But among all these different rocks, there was one that really caught our attention.” They nicknamed it “Atoko Point.”
Some 18 inches (45 centimeters) wide and 14 inches (35 centimeters) tall, the speckled, light-toned boulder stands out in a field of darker ones. Analysis by Perseverance’s SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments indicates that the rock is composed of the minerals pyroxene and feldspar. In terms of the size, shape, and arrangement of its mineral grains and crystals — and potentially its chemical composition — Atoko Point it is in a league of its own.
Some Perseverance scientists speculate the minerals that make up Atoko Point were produced in a subsurface body of magma that is possibly exposed now on the crater rim. Others on the team wonder if the boulder had been created far beyond the walls of Jezero and transported there by the swift Martian waters eons ago. Either way, the team believes that while Atoko is the first of its kind they’ve seen, it won’t be the last.
After leaving Mount Washburn, the rover headed 433 feet (132 meters) north to investigate the geology of “Tuff Cliff” before making the four-sol, 1,985-foot (605-meter) journey to Bright Angel. Perseverance is currently analyzing a rocky outcrop to assess whether a rock core sample should be collected.
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including caching samples that may contain signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.
Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
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Last Updated Jun 13, 2024 Related Terms
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