Nancy Grace Roman, a pioneer in astronomy, became NASA’s first chief of astronomy in 1959 and championed the advancement of space telescopes. Her legacy is honored through the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, designed to make significant contributions to astrophysics.
The Roman telescope features a 2.4-meter primary mirror, comparable to the Hubble Space Telescope, but distinguishes itself with two innovative instruments:
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Wide Field Instrument (WFI): A high-resolution camera with 300 million pixels capable of capturing images and spectra over an extensive area—about 100 times larger than those of HST or JWST.
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Roman Coronagraph Instrument: This technology aims to block starlight for directly imaging exoplanets around nearby stars.
As a project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I’ve been deeply involved in the development of the coronagraph and look forward to utilizing the WFI for my research, a dream long in the making.
