NASA — Launch Your Creativity with Space Crafts!

A view into a large clean room, a warehouse-like facility, reveals a set of six large, black rectangular structures that look like circuit boards with red lines and small glass tiles on them. Each panel is flat, installed in a black picture frame structure that allows them to be rotated. In the background, the same type of structures are upright and connected, standing around three times taller than a person. They’re assembled into their stowed, flight-like configuration. Instead of being covered in red circuitry, the upright panels have a series of gray squares all over them that simulate the mass of the solar cells and harnessing. To the upright structure’s right, several workers in head-to-toe white suits and blue gloves stand in a group. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

This photo contains both flight (flat in the foreground) and qualification assembly (upright in the background) versions of the Solar Array Sun Shield for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. These panels will both shade the mission’s instruments and power the observatory.

Seeing double? You’re looking at our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Solar Array Sun Shield laying flat in pieces in the foreground, and its test version connected and standing upright in the back. The Sun shield will do exactly what it sounds like –– shade the observatory –– and also collect sunlight for energy to power Roman.

These solar panels are twins, just like several of Roman’s other major components. Only one set will actually fly in space as part of the Roman spacecraft…so why do we need two?

Sometimes engineers do major tests to simulate launch and space conditions on a spare. That way, they don’t risk damaging the one that will go on the observatory. It also saves time because the team can do all the testing on the spare while building up the flight version. In the Sun shield’s case, that means fitting the flight version with solar cells and eventually getting the panels integrated onto the spacecraft.

A series of two images. The top one shows a large metallic structure suspended from the ceiling in a spacious room. The structure is hollow with six sides, each covered with a diamond-like pattern. Three people in head-to-toe white suits and blue gloves watch in the foreground. The left wall in the background is covered in small, pale pink squares. The right wall features a viewing window, through which several observers are looking. The bottom image is a wide-angle view of a similar structure in a different large room. It’s placed at the left end of a giant mechanical arm. Credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya/Chris Gunn (top), NASA/Scott Wiessinger (bottom)

Our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s primary structure (also called the spacecraft bus) moves into the big clean room at our Goddard Space Flight Center (top). While engineers integrate other components onto the spacecraft bus in the clean room, the engineering test unit (also called the structural verification unit) undergoes testing in the centrifuge at Goddard. The centrifuge spins space hardware to ensure it will hold up against the forces of launch.

Engineers at our Goddard Space Flight Center recently tested the Solar Array Sun Shield qualification assembly in a thermal vacuum chamber, which simulates the hot and cold temperatures and low-pressure environment that the panels will experience in space. And since the panels will be stowed for launch, the team practiced deploying them in space-like conditions. They passed all the tests with flying colors!

The qualification panels will soon pass the testing baton to the flight version. After the flight Solar Array Sun Shield is installed on the Roman spacecraft, the whole spacecraft will go through lots of testing to ensure it will hold up during launch and perform as expected in space.

For more information about the Roman Space Telescope, visit: www.nasa.gov/roman. You can also virtually tour an interactive version of the telescope here.

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source: nasa.tumblr.com