NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope successfully completed a series of tests of its precision pointing system and captured its first images with the coronagraph.
From 15 to 21 September 2026, engineers checked the observatory's fine-guidance system. The system uses small patches of the 18 detectors of the main Wide Field Instrument to track reference stars and corrects the telescope's position up to four times per second.
The tests confirmed stability better than 1/100 000 of a degree: half an hour for the Wide Field Instrument and up to eight hours for the coronagraph. This is equivalent to keeping a laser beam on a US 10-cent coin from a distance of about 240 kilometers.
On 22 September, the coronagraph opened its "eyes" to cosmic light for the first time. The instrument, designed to block starlight and directly image exoplanets, passed its initial check in space.
The team plans further tuning of the system to improve precision to the equivalent of 370 kilometers. How will this affect future searches for Earth-like planets?
These results marked an important step before the start of full-scale scientific observations. The Roman telescope continues preparations for its mission to study dark energy and exoplanets.
