Ball Aerospace, NASA Goddard Assemble Roman Space Telescope’s Wide Field Instrument

Ball Aerospace and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have assembled the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope‘s camera system, which will serve as the observatory’s primary instrument.

The Wide Field Instrument will work to capture images with a field of view that is at least 100 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope, providing astronomers with access to new data.

The team at Goddard developed the instrument’s focal plane system, relative calibration system and instrument command and data handling electronics while Ball designed and built the opto-mechanical assembly.

The latest milestone follows the WFI’s final integration in August, Ball Aerospace said.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is designed to explore dark energy, exoplanets and infrared astrophysics. According to NASA, the telescope’s wide field of view will allow it to generate bigger pictures of the universe, enhancing scientists’ ability to study dark energy, the universe’s expansion and galaxies’ distances.

The WFI is one of two instruments on the Roman Space Telescope. The other instrument is the Coronagraph, a demonstrator technology that would allow astronomers to directly image planets in orbit around other stars. The Coronagraph is designed to identify planets that are significantly dimmer in appearance than their host start.