Project
Technology-demonstration instrument on NASA's Roman Space Telescope using masks and deformable mirrors to block starlight for direct exoplanet imaging.
NASA's Roman Space Telescope held its pointing steady to better than 1/100,000 of a degree in September tests, for up to eight hours in coronagraph mode. Its coronagraph has also imaged stars, but its starlight suppression is still untested.
Reality
The Wide Field Instrument passed its first in-flight tests of detectors, calibration source, filter wheel and focus, and NASA says first science images are still expected by early 2027 with months of commissioning left.
Reality
NASA says the Roman Space Telescope now has propellant for at least 22 years of science against a planned decade, a margin built from a spacecraft that launched light and course-correction burns that came in under their allocations.
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The telescope's first proposal round came back twelvefold oversubscribed. Hubble and Webb have posted the same result for years: the figure describes how much telescope time exists, not Roman's standing in particular.
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The experimental instrument riding alongside Roman's survey camera carries the first deformable mirrors NASA has flown, and its science teams have pre-committed to a test that tells them whether the fault is theirs.
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Before the telescope's Aug. 30 launch, ground software named ROSALIA already helps decide which targets get scheduled and what the darkest pixels are allowed to mean.
Reality