Roman's Primary Structure - B-Roll Footage

  • Released Friday, May 5, 2023
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The primary structure that will serve as the “bones” of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has moved into the big clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The spacecraft bus, Roman’s primary support element, will now be built upon this skeletal framework. Roman will help unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter, search for and image exoplanets, and explore many topics in infrared astrophysics.

It’s partly made up of a central cylinder with a top deck that will support most of the observatory. Each of its six sides has a compartment that will house key electronics and other hardware needed to operate the observatory. Major spacecraft elements, such as its power, attitude control and propulsion systems, will be housed within the primary structure. The high-gain antenna will be installed beneath it, and the lowermost part of the primary structure will attach the spacecraft to the rocket during launch.

The structure is mainly made of a special grade of aluminum that’s strong, yet lightweight. To reduce the weight even further, most of its exterior is partly hollowed out in a triangular pattern called an isogrid. Even though it’s large – about 14 feet (4.3 meters) long, 12 feet (3.7 meters) wide, and 6.5 feet (2 meters) tall – the primary structure weighs just 3,600 pounds (1,600 kilograms).

Goddard Space Flight Center's Building 5 has the machine shop that put together the Roman Space Telescope's primary structure.

Once work creating the primary structure was completed, it was placed on a truck and moved to Building 29, and stored in the high bay.

All "dirty work" like fit checks and positioning and any drilling are done in the high bay before everything is cleaned and pushed into the adjacent clean room.

In loosely keeping with a Roman theme, the support structure for people to work on the tall telescope pieces is named the Pantheon. Here the Pantheon is pushed into the clean room. Air pushed into pads at the feet of the Pantheon allow it to be pused with relative ease.

The six-sided primary structure is pushed into the cleanroom. The air pressure inside the clean room is greater than outside, so no dirt flows inside when the door opens. People wearing clean room suits, also known as bunny suits, receive the structure.

Once inside, the primary structure is lifted onto the pantheon. Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol watched from the observation window.

Time-lapse video of the primary structure as it is lifted and placed onto the Pantheon structure.

For More Information

See https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/framework-for-nasas-roman-spacecraft-moves-to-goddard-clean-room

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Friday, May 5, 2023.
This page was last updated on Thursday, May 4, 2023 at 7:07 PM EDT.

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