The NASA team successfully activated the main instrument of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope — the Wide Field Instrument, a 300-megapixel infrared camera.
The activation took place on 11 September 2026 after a ten-day drying and cooling of the instrument to minus 225 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 143 degrees Celsius).
Eighteen infrared detectors, whose light-sensitive area is comparable in size to a laptop screen, have begun operating in space for the first time.
At the same time, the Coronagraph Instrument — a device for directly imaging exoplanets — was also checked.
All tests confirmed that the systems are functioning normally.
The telescope, launched on 30 August, continues its journey to the Lagrange point L2, a million miles from Earth.
“After many years of work on building and testing the instrument on the ground, we have received confirmation that it works in space. This is a huge milestone,” noted Josh Schlieder, a scientist with the Wide Field Instrument at NASA’s Goddard Center.
The first scientific images are expected in early 2027.
Each image will cover an area of sky larger than the visible size of the full Moon and will be 100 times wider in area than Hubble’s images, at comparable sharpness.
Scientists plan to use the data to study dark energy, dark matter, exoplanets and the structure of the Universe.
So what will these wide and detailed surveys of space reveal?
The calibration and testing process will take several more months, but the telescope is already on its way to full-fledged scientific work.
