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The Classified Roots of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: How a Spy Agency’s Secret Satellite Became a Space Observatory
The innovative technology behind NASA’s new premier space observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, has a secret side.
That’s because the optical technologies that will propel the search for dark matter and exoplanets in the coming years have roots in one of America’s spy agencies.
The Secret History of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
The clandestine side of the Roman telescope’s story begins in 2012, with a surprise that landed on NASA’s doorstep at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center: a pair of once-classified spy satellites.
The satellites were gifted to NASA by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the military agency tasked with the design and construction of the U.S. federal government’s intelligence-gathering satellites.
The Roman Telescope is a modified version of one of those two former spy satellites NASA received in 2012, which were originally developed for looking back toward Earth, rather than scouring the cosmos for signs of exoplanets and signs of some of the universe’s most elusive phenomena.
However, the original NRO project that led to the development of its satellites ended up being cancelled due to budgetary issues. So as not to allow the technology to go to waste, the orphaned satellites were soon handed over to NASA.
Retrofitting a Spy Satellite for Space Observations
Before the new Roman telescope that has astronomers so excited would take shape, NASA had to take the existing satellite frames provided by the NRO and attach special instruments that would equip it for cosmic observations, rather than just the clandestine ones it was originally designed for with its observations of Earth.
These additions included an infrared camera similar to the one on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which allows it to observe phenomena at infrared wavelengths and spot phenomena across great cosmic distances that may not be discernible from Earth at normal visible wavelengths.
Along with the addition of new instruments, the satellite was also fitted for deployment further from Earth at the same Lagrange Point currently occupied by Webb.
Overcoming Obstacles
The telescope is named after Nancy Roman, NASA’s first female executive, who served as its first chief of astronomy and was an influential astronomer in the development of classifications for stellar objects and their motion.
Even with its original development by another government agency, the Roman Telescope’s mission was nearly cancelled because of proposals in 2018 and 2019 under the first Trump administration.
Fortunately, with its launch scheduled for Sunday morning, Roman has already overcome several hurdles on its way from its original development for one of America’s spy agencies to becoming NASA’s newest milestone in astrophysics studies.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
