NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Has a Hidden Technological Leap

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will carry a coronagraph that uses two palm-sized active deformable mirrors, each equipped with about 2,300 actuators, to perform adaptive-optics wavefront control in space. Coupled with ultra-sensitive photon detectors and intricate mask “star shades,” the instrument will attempt direct imaging of reflected starlight from known exoplanets, providing the first test of this technology beyond Earth’s atmosphere.