Overview
- A NASA report published Oct. 14 showed the telescope’s Wide Field Instrument met a wavefront error of about 63 nanometers RMS, roughly 30% better than the mission requirement of ~90 nm.
- Engineers achieved the improved focus by tiny in-space adjustments, including moving the secondary mirror by about one-sixteenth of a human hair to correct alignment and lower optical error.
- The Coronagraph Instrument had an initial focus fix but still needs further camera calibration and deformable-mirror tuning before its starlight-suppression demonstrations can begin.
- Launched Aug. 30 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, the observatory is en route to its Earth–Sun L2 orbit and is expected to deliver first public images in early 2027 as commissioning continues.
- Roman pairs a Hubble-sized 2.4 m mirror with a very large 300-million-pixel camera to image areas at least 100 times larger than Hubble per exposure, which will speed wide-area surveys for dark matter, dark energy and exoplanets and improve the precision of those measurements.