oxhak on Nostr: NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has an unusual lineage: key hardware began ...

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has an unusual lineage: key hardware began life in a U.S. reconnaissance-satellite program before being redirected to astronomy. The National Reconnaissance Office transferred two unused telescope mirrors to NASA in 2012, giving scientists a proven 2.4-meter optical design that could be adapted for a much wider scientific mission.

Roman will survey enormous areas of the sky in infrared light, helping astronomers investigate dark energy, dark matter and the evolution of galaxies. Its wide field of view is designed to capture far more sky at once than the Hubble Space Telescope, while its planned coronagraph will test technologies for directly imaging exoplanets. The observatory is targeted for launch no later than May 2027, turning former surveillance technology toward questions about the universe. This conversion also shows how hardware developed for national security can gain a second life in open scientific research.

https://www.space.com/astronomy/from-spy-satellite-to-space-telescope-the-unlikely-origins-of-nasas-roman-space-telescope