![]() ![]() ![]() The Northrop Grumman team must ensure that the SSIRU will continue to perform even when the Roman Space Telescope is located millions of miles away. The Roman Space Telescope introduces an exciting next era in space exploration by enabling the measurement of light from a billion galaxies and will survey the inner Milky Way to find hundreds of exoplanets in the habitable zones of their stars. Keeping the Roman Space Telescope on Course for the Long (Distance) Haul “We took a relatively mature technology, and we were able to provide precise output through the use of enhanced data processing,” said Kevin Brabec, director of space and strategic programs within Northrop Grumman’s Navigation and Positioning Systems business unit. ![]() The HRG can measure a very slight movement in order to pinpoint the movement of the SSIRU and therefore stabilize and point the telescope in space. While the physics behind the HRG has been known for decades, it was the Northrop Grumman team who developed algorithms and mechanical manufacturing methods to perfect the process. He explained that if you rub your finger around a wine glass to make a sound, when you rotate the wine glass, you’ll hear a difference in the pitch. “The HRG is based on a theory of a wine glass,” said Larry Hershman, program manager for SSIRU. Inside the SSIRU, the gyros are a key element in stabilizing the telescope’s platform by detecting angular movement, which ensures the telescope can properly point to an exact location in the sky and detect light that will reveal previously unknown facts about the universe. The SSIRU has been used on a wide variety of military, commercial and science missions that require high-precision pointing. The HRG-based SSIRU has spent more than 50 million operating hours in orbit with 100% mission success. A star player is the Hemispherical Resonator Gyro (HRG), a sensor that has a proven track record of reliability and longevity, two features that will be critical for the Roman Space Telescope’s success. But inside the box, advanced electronics and sensors tell a bigger story. Pairing Wine Glass Physics with Advanced Algorithmsįrom the outside, the Scalable Space Inertial Reference Unit (SSIRU) looks deceptively simple - it appears to be a foot-long black box with a few basic controls. But if your shaky hand can make a once-in-a-lifetime photo blurry, just imagine the importance of a having a reliably steady telescope in space. To do these things, the images it takes must be stunningly sharp – the equivalent of being able to see which way a firefly is facing in a photo taken from a distance of 10 miles. Set to launch in the mid-2020s, the Roman Space Telescope will measure light from other galaxies and search for mysterious celestial objects such as rogue planets that wander through the universe without a star. Named for NASA’s first chief of astronomy who assisted with the Hubble Space Telescope launch, the Roman Space Telescope will help answer essential astrophysics questions about dark energy, dark matter, exoplanets and infrared astrophysics. Within the next decade, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope ( Roman Space Telescope) will be one million miles away from Earth, orbiting the L2 point (the second Lagrange Point), about four times further than the Moon, but in the direction away from the Sun. ![]()
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