NASA Tests Deployment of Roman Space Telescope’s ‘Visor’

The “visor” for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope recently completed several environmental tests simulating the conditions it will experience during launch and in space. Called the Deployable Aperture Cover, this large sunshade is designed to keep unwanted light out of the telescope. This milestone marks the halfway point for the cover’s final sprint of testing, bringing it one step closer to integration with Roman’s other subsystems this fall.

Designed and built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the Deployable Aperture Cover consists of two layers of reinforced thermal blankets, distinguishing it from previous hard aperture covers, like those on NASA’s Hubble. The sunshade will remain folded during launch and deploy after Roman is in space via three booms that spring upward when triggered electronically. 

“With a soft deployable like the Deployable Aperture Cover, it’s very difficult to model and precisely predict what it’s going to do — you just have to test it,” said Matthew Neuman, a Deployable Aperture Cover mechanical engineer at Goddard. “Passing this testing now really proves that this system works.”

During its first major environmental test, the sunshade endured conditions simulating what it will experience in space. It was sealed inside NASA Goddard’s Space Environment Simulator — a massive chamber that can achieve extremely low pressure and a wide range of temperatures. Technicians placed the DAC near six heaters — a Sun simulator — and thermal simulators representing Roman’s Outer Barrel Assembly and Solar Array Sun Shield. Since these two components will eventually form a subsystem with the Deployable Aperture Cover, replicating their temperatures allows engineers to understand how heat will actually flow when Roman is in space. 

When in space, the sunshade is expected to operate at minus 67 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 55 degrees Celsius. However, recent testing cooled the cover to minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 70 degrees Celsius — ensuring that it will work even in unexpectedly cold conditions. Once chilled, technicians triggered its deployment, carefully monitoring through cameras and sensors onboard. Over the span of about a minute, the sunshade successfully deployed, proving its resilience in extreme space conditions.

“This was probably the environmental test we were most nervous about,” said Brian Simpson, project design lead for the Deployable Aperture Cover at NASA Goddard. “If there’s any reason that the Deployable Aperture Cover would stall or not completely deploy, it would be because the material became frozen stiff or stuck to itself.”

If the sunshade were to stall or partially deploy, it would obscure Roman’s view, severely limiting the mission’s science capabilities.

After passing thermal vacuum testing, the sunshade underwent acoustic testing to simulate the launch’s intense noises, which can cause vibrations at higher frequencies than the shaking of the launch itself. During this test, the sunshade remained stowed, hanging inside one of Goddard’s acoustic chambers — a large room outfitted with two gigantic horns and hanging microphones to monitor sound levels. 

With the sunshade plastered in sensors, the acoustic test ramped up in noise level, eventually subjecting the cover to one full minute at 138 decibels — louder than a jet plane’s takeoff at close range! Technicians attentively monitored the sunshade’s response to the powerful acoustics and gathered valuable data, concluding that the test succeeded.

“For the better part of a year, we’ve been building the flight assembly,” Simpson said. “We’re finally getting to the exciting part where we get to test it. We’re confident that we’ll get through with no problem, but after each test we can’t help but breathe a collective sigh of relief!”

Next, the Deployable Aperture Cover will undergo its two final phases of testing. These assessments will measure the sunshade’s natural frequency and response to the launch’s vibrations. Then, the Deployable Aperture Cover will integrate with the Outer Barrel Assembly and Solar Array Sun Shield this fall.

For more information about the Roman Space Telescope, visit NASA’s website. 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.

Download high-resolution video and images from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

By Laine Havens
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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Hubble Spotlights a Supernova

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the galaxy LEDA 857074, located in the constellation Eridanus. LEDA 857074 is a barred spiral galaxy, with partially broken spiral arms. The image also captured a supernova, named SN 2022ADQZ, shining brightly on the right side of the galaxy’s bar.

Several evolutionary paths can lead to a supernova explosion. One is the death of a supermassive star. When a supermassive star runs out of its hydrogen fuel, it begins a stage where it fuses the remaining elements to heavier and heavier ones. These final fusion reactions generate less and less outward force (radiation pressure) to balance the star’s gravitational tug inward. As heavier elements form in the star’s core, the core itself begins to fully collapse under its own gravity, and the star’s outer layers blast away in a supernova explosion. Depending on the star’s original mass, its core may collapse to nothing but neutrons, leaving behind a neutron star, or its gravity may be so great that it collapses to a black hole.

Astronomers detected supernova SN 2022ADQZ with an automated survey in late 2022. This discovery led them to look at the supernova’s host galaxy, LEDA 857074, with Hubble in early 2023.

Hubble’s sharp vision means that it can see supernovae that are billions of light years away and difficult for other telescopes to study. A supernova image from the ground usually blends in with the image of its host galaxy, but Hubble can distinguish a supernova’s light from its host galaxy’s, measuring the supernova directly.

Astronomers detect thousands of supernovae annually, but the chance that they spot one in any particular galaxy of the millions that are cataloged is slim. Thanks to this supernova, LEDA 857074 joins the ranks of other celestial objects with its own Hubble image.

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Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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NASA Mission Concludes After Years of Successful Asteroid Detections

Engineers on NASA’s NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission commanded the spacecraft to turn its transmitter off for the last time Thursday. This concludes more than 10 years of its planetary defense mission to search for asteroids and comets, including those that could pose a threat to Earth.

The final command was sent from the Earth Orbiting Missions Operation Center at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, with mission members past and present in attendance alongside officials from the agency’s headquarters in Washington. NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System then relayed the signal to NEOWISE, decommissioning the spacecraft. As NASA previously shared, the spacecraft’s science survey ended on July 31, and all remaining science data was downlinked from the spacecraft.

“The NEOWISE mission has been an extraordinary success story as it helped us better understand our place in the universe by tracking asteroids and comets that could be hazardous for us on Earth,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. “While we are sad to see this brave mission come to an end, we are excited for the future scientific discoveries it has opened by setting the foundation for the next generation planetary defense telescope.”

NASA ended the mission because NEOWISE will soon drop too low in its orbit around Earth to provide usable science data. An uptick in solar activity is heating the upper atmosphere, causing it to expand and create drag on the spacecraft, which does not have a propulsion system to keep it in orbit. Now decommissioned, NEOWISE is expected to safely burn up in our planet’s atmosphere in late 2024.

During its operational lifetime, the infrared survey telescope exceeded scientific objectives for not one but two missions, starting with the WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission. Managed by JPL, WISE launched in December 2009 with a seven-month mission to scan the entire infrared sky. By July 2010, WISE had accomplished this with far greater sensitivity than previous surveys. A few months later, the telescope ran out of the coolant that kept heat produced by the spacecraft from interfering with its infrared observations. (Invisible to the human eye, infrared wavelengths are associated with heat.)

NASA extended the mission under the name NEOWISE until February 2011 to complete a survey of the main belt asteroids, at which point the spacecraft was put into hibernation. Analysis of this data showed that although the lack of coolant meant the space telescope could no longer observe the faintest infrared objects in the universe, it could still make precise observations of asteroids and comets that generate a strong infrared signal from being heated by the Sun as they travel past our planet.

NASA brought the telescope out of hibernation in 2013 under the Near-Earth Object Observations Program, a precursor for the agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, to continue the NEOWISE survey of asteroids and comets in the pursuit of planetary defense.

“The NEOWISE mission has been instrumental in our quest to map the skies and understand the near-Earth environment. Its huge number of discoveries have expanded our knowledge of asteroids and comets, while also boosting our nation’s planetary defense,” said Laurie Leshin, director, NASA JPL. “As we bid farewell to NEOWISE, we also celebrate the team behind it for their impressive achievements.” 

By repeatedly observing the sky from low Earth orbit, NEOWISE created all-sky maps featuring 1.45 million infrared measurements of more than 44,000 solar system objects. Of the 3,000-plus near-Earth objects it detected, 215 were first spotted by NEOWISE. The mission also discovered 25 new comets, including the famed comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE that streaked across the night sky in the summer of 2020.

In addition to leaving behind a trove of science data, the spacecraft has helped inform the development of NASA’s first infrared space telescope purpose-built for detecting near-Earth objects: NEO Surveyor.

“The NEOWISE mission has provided a unique, long-duration data set of the infrared sky that will be used by scientists for decades to come,” said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator for both NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But its additional legacy is that it has helped lay the groundwork for NASA’s next planetary defense infrared space telescope.”

Also managed by JPL, NEO Surveyor will seek out some of the hardest-to-find near-Earth objects, such as dark asteroids and comets that don’t reflect much visible light, as well as objects that approach Earth from the direction of the Sun. The next-generation infrared space telescope will greatly enhance the capabilities of the international planetary defense community, which includes NASA-funded ground surveys. Construction of NEO Surveyor is already well under way, with a launch date set for no earlier than 2027.

More Mission Information

The NEOWISE and NEO Surveyor missions support the objectives of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office at the agency’s headquarters. The NASA Authorization Act of 2005 directed NASA to discover and characterize at least 90% of the near-Earth objects more than 460 feet (140 meters) across that come within 30 million miles (48 million kilometers) of our planet’s orbit. Objects of this size can cause significant regional damage, or worse, should they impact the Earth.

NASA JPL manages and operates the NEOWISE mission for the agency’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office within the Science Mission Directorate. The Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, built the science instrument. BAE Systems of Boulder, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Science data processing, archiving, and distribution is done at IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

To learn more about NEOWISE, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/neowise

-end-

Karen Fox / Alana Johnson
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
karen.c.fox@nasa.gov / alana.r.johnson@nasa.gov

Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
ian.j.oneill@jpl.nasa.gov 

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Tiernan P. Doyle

NASA Aircraft Gathers 150 Hours of Data to Better Understand Earth

Operating internationally over several countries this summer, NASA’S C-20A aircraft completed more than 150 hours of science flights across two months in support of Earth science research and overcame several challenges throughout its missions.

Based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research in Edwards, California, the C-20A research aircraft has been modified to support the Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar and SAR-fusion camera. The instruments, built and operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, collect data and images of Earth’s surface for use in understanding global ecosystems, natural hazards, and land surface changes.  

From May 20 to July 24, the team crossed the Atlantic and deployed to several locations in Africa, as well as Germany, for two campaigns. They included the Africa Synthetic Aperture Radar (AfriSAR) mission, in collaboration with the European Space Agency, and the Germany Bistatic Experiment, in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center.

For the AfriSAR mission, researchers collected airborne data over African forests, savannas, and wetlands for use in studies of Earth’s ecosystems. Datasets collected over Germany will be used to develop land surface height maps.

The flight team successfully achieved its missions despite several challenges, including mechanical and technical issues with the aircraft. Despite the challenges, the team resolved issues quickly and worked to minimize impacts to the science schedule and objectives.

“We prepared for the unexpected and we expected to be unprepared,” said Shawn Kern, NASA Armstrong’s director of safety and mission assurance and a C-20A pilot. “With that mindset, we were ready to adapt and change the plans as needed, and met challenges with a lot of resilience, a lot of innovation, and a lot of improvised solutions to get things done despite some significant roadblocks.”

The team included aircraft mechanics, avionics technicians, quality assurance representatives, science leads and instrument operators, operation engineers, mission managers, and pilots. They were also supported by project management, safety, logistics, weather, and maintenance personnel at NASA Armstrong.

“It was really the teamwork, improvisation, and creativity that resolved these unexpected challenges that made the mission a success.” Kern added.

Gathering scientific data in unique regions and conditions is necessary to understanding climate on the global scale. Data generated from these two airborne campaigns can be used to support the calibration and validation of data from future satellite-based missions like NISAR (NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar).

“Airborne campaigns like these are essential for enabling space-based technology. There are often measurements and science that simply cannot be achieved from satellites alone, and so they require airborne data collection.” said Gerald Bawden, program scientist for studies of Earth’s surface and interior at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This deployment advanced both of these areas and was enabled by this team.”

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