NASA Installs Key ‘Sunblock’ Shield on Roman Space Telescope
The technicians managed to install two Sunchouells on the interior segment of Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope of NASA. In addition to the solar solar shield of the Observatory and the opening cover deployable from the Observatory, the panels (set called The Lower Sun Shade) will play an essential role in keeping the instruments of fresh and stable novel as the mission explores the infrared universe.
The team is on the right track to join the external and interior assemblies of Roman this fall to complete the complete observatory, which can then undergo other preheating tests.
“This shield is like an extremely strong sunscreen for the sensitive instruments of novel, protecting them from heat and sunlight which would otherwise overwhelm our ability to detect low space signals,” said Matthew Stephens, an aerospace engineer at the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbel, Maryland.
The Sunshade, which has been designed and designed at NASA Goddard, is essentially an extension of novel solar panels, except without solar cells. Each subshanium of Sunshade has roughly the size of a garage door – about 7 to 7 feet (2.1 by 2.1 meters) – and 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) of thickness.
“These are essentially giant aluminum sandwiches, with metal sheets as thin as a credit card at the top and bottom and the central part made up of a honeycomb structure,” said Conrad Mason, aerospace engineer from Nasa Goddard.
This design makes the panels light but rigid, and the material helps limit the heat transfer on the side of the sun at the back – no small feat since the front will be hot enough to boil water (up to 216 degrees fahrenheit, or 102 degrees Celsius) while the back will be much cooler than the hardest winter of Antarctica (Minus 211 Fahrenheit, or Kinus 135). A specialized polymer film cover will wrap around each panel to temper the heat, with 17 layers on the sun side and one on the shaded side.
The Sunshade will be stored and will slowly deploy an hour after the launch.
“The deployment mechanisms have shock absorbers that work like gentle greenhouse hinges for drawers or cabinets, so that the panels do not open and do not squeeze the observatory,” said Stephens. “They each take about two minutes to move in their final positions. This is the very first system that Roman will deploy in space after the spacecraft separates from the launch vehicle. ”
Now completely assembled, the novel’s interior segment should undergo a 70 -day thermal vacuum cleaner test. Engineers and scientists will test the full functionality of the spaceship, telescope and instruments under simulated space conditions. After the test, the Sunshade will be temporarily withdrawn while the team joins the external and interior assemblies of novel, then reat to finish the observatory. The mission remains on the right track for the launch at the latest in May 2027, the team aimed in the fall of 2026.
Download the high -resolution video and images of the NASA scientific visualization studio
The Roman Spatial Telescope of Nancy Grace is managed at the Goddard Space Flight Center in NASA in Greenbelt, Maryland, with the participation of the NASA jet propulsion laboratory in Southern California; Caltech / Ipac in Pasadena, California; The Institute of Sciences of the Space Telescope in Baltimore; And a scientific team including scientists from various research institutions. The main industrial partners are BAE Systems Inc. in Boulder, Colorado; L3harris Technologies in Rochester, New York; And Teledyne Scientific & Imaging at Thousand Oaks, California.
By Ashley Balzer
Goddard Space Flight Center of NASAGreenbelt, md.
