The first photons from stars have reached the main camera on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a step that confirms its most important scientific instrument is working successfully after its launch into space.
NASA announced the activation of the Wide Field Instrument, a multi-band camera with more than 300 million pixels that detects visible and near-infrared light.
The first test produced an image of blurry starlight, which was expected because the detector array was still in storage mode and had not yet reached its final focus position.
In each image, the camera captures an area of the sky larger than the apparent size of the full moon, with a resolution approaching that of the Hubble telescope. This gives it the ability to quickly scan vast cosmic areas, searching for planets outside the solar system, mapping the distribution of matter, and studying the effect of dark energy on the expansion of the universe.
The team also tested the "Coronagraph" instrument, which blocks the glare of stars in order to reveal faint planets nearby, but this instrument is primarily a demonstration of new technology and not the mission''s main camera
The Space Telescope Science Institute confirmed that Roman, launched on August 30, will give scientists a panoramic field of view that is about 200 times that of Hubble in infrared radiation.
Scientific operations are expected to begin after the completion of the commissioning and calibration phase, with the first scientific images expected to arrive in early 2027.