Pic of the Week: Preparing the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Members of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope propellant, safety, and quality assurance team. (NASA/Sydney Rohde (Rocz))

The image above, taken on July 20th, shows one of the many teams working on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope as it gets ready for its launch on August 30th. The pictured individuals are part of the propellant, safety, and quality assurance team.

NASA’s latest update on the mission stated:

Technicians completed fueling NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, bringing it an important step closer to launch. On July 25, the team completed operations that carefully loaded 290 gallons of hydrazine fuel into the observatory at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

After launch and separation from the rocket, Roman will use this onboard propellant to perform maneuvers as it travels to Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, or L2, located about one million miles from Earth. There, about four times the distance to the Moon, it will have an ideal home for astronomy.