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L3Harris Technologies said it has supplied key hardware for NASA’s successfully launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, an observatory designed to map the universe and the product of more than a decade of work with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
The company provided the mission’s 2.4-meter Optical Telescope Assembly, which serves as the spacecraft’s eye, as well as radiation-hardened electronics to help keep the observatory operating roughly 1 million miles from Earth.
“It’s a great source of pride for L3Harris that the optical eye we engineered will survey the cosmos 1,000 times faster than the Hubble Space Telescope and is expected to unveil billions of galaxies, hundreds of millions of stars and more than 100,000 distant worlds,” said Jeff Hanke, President, Space Systems, Space & Mission Systems, L3Harris. “This L3Harris technology is helping to rewrite our understanding of the universe.”
Once operational, the L3Harris-built telescope assembly is slated to conduct three primary surveys. Plans include peering through the Milky Way’s dense galactic center to assemble what the company describes as the largest astronomical catalog ever compiled. It will also scan about 12% of the sky in under 18 months to measure how quickly the universe is expanding and to study supernova explosions from up to 8 billion years ago.
The milestone extends the company’s record of work on major space programs, with technology contributions to the James Webb Space Telescope, the Mars Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, the GPS satellite constellation and systems on the International Space Station.
