“We don’t have moments of terror for the deployment,” Townsend said. “Obviously, launch is always a risk, the tip-off rates that you have when you separate from the launch vehicle… Then, obviously, getting the aperture door open so that it’s deployed is another one. But these feel like normal aerospace risks, not unusual, harrowing moments for Roman.”
It also helps that Roman will use a primary mirror gifted to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office, the US government’s spy satellite agency. The NRO originally ordered the mirror for a telescope that would peer down on the Earth, but the spy agency no longer needed it. Before NASA got its
→ Continue reading at Ars Technica