Space Hardware - Blog Posts

nasa

1 year ago

A group of people wearing white clean room suits with hoods and blue gloves work in a circle at the base of a tall, silver-and-gold structure laced with wiring. Behind them, on the right, is an eight-story white wall with blue stripes and a glass window. The left, far wall is covered in pale, square filters. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s flight harness is transferred from the mock-up structure to the spacecraft flight structure.

Your Body is Wired Like a NASA Space Telescope. Sort Of.

If our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope were alive, its nervous system would be the intricate wiring, or “harness,” that helps different parts of the observatory communicate with one another. Just like the human body sends information through nerves to function, Roman will send commands through this special harness to help achieve its mission: answering longstanding questions about dark energy, dark matter, and exoplanets, among other mind-bending cosmic queries.

Roman’s harness weighs around 1,000 pounds and is made of about 32,000 wires and 900 connectors. If those parts were laid out end-to-end, they would be 45 miles long from start to finish. Coincidentally, the human body’s nerves would span the same distance if lined up. That’s far enough to reach nearly three-fourths of the way to space, twice as far as a marathon, or eight times taller than Mount Everest!

Seen from above, two individuals wearing white clean room suits with hoods and blue gloves work inside of a large, silvery metal structure with a hexagonal shape and a large cylindrical hole, covered in a diamond-patterned texture. Red and white wire bundles of cables drape across the top of the structure like strands of spaghetti. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

An aerial view of the harness technicians working to secure Roman’s harness to the spacecraft flight structure.

Over a span of two years, 11 technicians spent time at the workbench and perched on ladders, cutting wire to length, carefully cleaning each component, and repeatedly connecting everything together.

Space is usually freezing cold, but spacecraft that are in direct sunlight can get incredibly hot. Roman’s harness went through the Space Environment Simulator – a massive thermal vacuum chamber – to expose the components to the temperatures they’ll experience in space. Technicians “baked” vapors out of the harness to make sure they won’t cause problems later in orbit.

Seen from below, two individuals wearing white clean room suits with hoods and blue gloves work inside of a silvery cylindrical metal structure. Seven bright lights mounted to the ceiling shine down onto them. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

Technicians work to secure Roman’s harness to the interior of the spacecraft flight structure. They are standing in the portion of the spacecraft bus where the propellant tanks will be mounted.

The next step is for engineers to weave the harness through the flight structure in Goddard’s big clean room, a space almost perfectly free of dust and other particles. This process will be ongoing until most of the spacecraft components are assembled. The Roman Space Telescope is set to launch by May 2027.

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on X and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

Our Roman Space Telescope’s Dish is Complete!

Wide shot of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s high-gain antenna inside a testing chamber that is covered in blue spiked-shaped foam. The antenna is a large grey dish, about the height of a refrigerator, facing slightly to the left. There is a small circle that is elevated in the middle of the antenna disk by six metal strips. The antenna is mounted to a base that is also covered in blue spikes. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

NASA engineers recently completed tests of the high-gain antenna for our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This observatory has some truly stellar plans once it launches by May 2027. Roman will help unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter – two invisible components that helped shape our universe and may determine its ultimate fate. The mission will also search for and image planets outside our solar system and explore all kinds of other cosmic topics.

However, it wouldn’t be able to send any of the data it will gather back to Earth without its antenna. Pictured above in a test chamber, this dish will provide the primary communication link between the Roman spacecraft and the ground. It will downlink the highest data volume of any NASA astrophysics mission so far.

Close-up of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s high-gain antenna inside a testing chamber that is covered in blue spiked-shaped foam. The antenna is a large grey dish, about the height of a refrigerator, facing slightly to the right. There is a small circle that is elevated in the middle of the antenna disk by six metal strips. There are small faint black circles that cover the disk. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

The antenna reflector is made of a carbon composite material that weighs very little but will still withstand wide temperature fluctuations. It’s very hot and cold in space – Roman will experience a temperature range of minus 26 to 284 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 32 to 140 degrees Celsius)!

The dish spans 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) in diameter, standing about as tall as a refrigerator, yet only weighs 24 pounds (10.9 kilograms) – about as much as a dachshund. Its large size will help Roman send radio signals across a million miles of intervening space to Earth.

At one frequency, the dual-band antenna will receive commands and send back information about the spacecraft’s health and location. It will use another frequency to transmit a flood of data at up to 500 megabits per second to ground stations on Earth. The dish is designed to point extremely accurately at Earth, all while both Earth and the spacecraft are moving through space.

Close-up of the spiked-shaped blue foam covering the walls of the chamber. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

Engineers tested the antenna to make sure it will withstand the spacecraft’s launch and operate as expected in the extreme environment of space. The team also measured the antenna’s performance in a radio-frequency anechoic test chamber. Every surface in the test chamber is covered in pyramidal foam pieces that minimize interfering reflections during testing. Next, the team will attach the antenna to the articulating boom assembly, and then electrically integrate it with Roman’s Radio Frequency Communications System.

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!