NASA team installs solar panels on roman space telescope observatory

Technicians at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recently installed the solar panels onto the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This installation marked one of the final steps in assembling the observatory. Collectively called the Solar Array Sun Shield, the panels are designed to both power and shade the telescope, enabling its scientific observations and helping keep its instruments cool.

According to Jack Marshall, the Solar Array Sun Shield lead at NASA Goddard, the observatory is approximately 90% complete. The remaining work includes joining two large assemblies, followed by a series of comprehensive tests on the fully integrated system. The project is currently ahead of schedule, with a potential launch as early as fall 2026, several months before the official commitment date of no later than May 2027.

Image credit: NASA/Sydney Rohde

NASA team installs solar panels on roman space telescope observatory

Over two days, a team of eight technicians installed the six solar panels, each measuring about 23 by 33 feet (7 by 10 meters) and equipped with photovoltaic cells. These cells will harness sunlight to generate the electricity needed to operate the observatory. Designed, built, and installed at NASA Goddard, the solar panels consist of two central panels fixed to the observatory’s outer barrel assembly and four additional panels that will deploy once in space, swinging into alignment with the center panels.

Throughout the mission, the panels will remain oriented toward the Sun to ensure a continuous power supply to the observatory’s electronics. This configuration also provides essential shade, maintaining low temperatures crucial for infrared observations. Because infrared light is perceived as heat, minimizing excess warmth from the spacecraft itself is vital to prevent interference with the telescope’s sensitive detectors.

The array features a total of 3,902 solar cells, converting sunlight into electricity similarly to how plants transform sunlight into chemical energy. When photons, tiny packets of light, strike the cells, some of their energy excites electrons in the material, causing them to move or jump to higher energy levels. These moving electrons generate an electric current, which is then channeled to power the observatory.

With the solar panels installed, the outer segment of the Roman observatory is now complete, noted Aaron Vigil, a mechanical engineer at NASA Goddard. The next steps include test deployments of both the solar panels and the observatory’s deployable aperture cover, known as the “visor.” Simultaneously, the team continues to assess the core observatory’s electronics and conduct thermal vacuum testing to confirm that all systems can withstand the harsh space environment.

These milestones are set to keep the project on track for integrating the inner and outer segments of the observatory by November, aiming to have the complete spacecraft ready for pre-launch testing by the end of the year.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center with participation from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, California, and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. The science team includes researchers from multiple institutions. Key industrial partners include BAE Systems Inc. (Boulder, Colorado), L3Harris Technologies (Rochester, New York), and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging (Thousand Oaks, California).