NASA Says Roman Telescope Could Gain 12 Years and 30% Sharper Images
Updated
Updated · Livescience.com · Nov 11
NASA Says Roman Telescope Could Gain 12 Years and 30% Sharper Images
2 articles · Updated · Livescience.com · Nov 11
Summary
Roman is about 85% of the way to the Sun-Earth L2 point, and NASA now expects the $4 billion observatory to outlast and outperform its original design before science operations even begin.
Near-perfect postlaunch burns and lower-than-planned spacecraft mass saved enough propellant for roughly 12 extra years, potentially extending the mission beyond its planned 10 years and into 2048.
A mirror realignment of just one-sixteenth of a human hair also boosted expected image sharpness by about 30%, improving output from Roman's wide-field camera as commissioning continues.
The telescope, built to survey the cosmos up to 1,000 times faster than Hubble and find an estimated 100,000 exoplanets, should reach L2 within weeks with its coronagraph and ground links already working as intended.