From Pasadena to the Stars: JPL’s Roman Coronagraph Instrument Ships to NASA

A pioneering technology developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena will soon journey to the stars. The Roman Coronagraph Instrument, part of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, has shipped from JPL to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in preparation for a late May 2027 launch.

The coronagraph aims to demonstrate unprecedented capabilities in blocking starlight, enabling direct imaging of planets around other stars. At its maximum capability, it could image an exoplanet similar to Jupiter around a star like our Sun. 

“The active components, like deformable mirrors, are essential if you want to achieve the goals of a mission like the Habitable Worlds Observatory,” said JPL’s Ilya Poberezhskiy, the project systems engineer for the Roman Coronagraph.

The instrument recently underwent rigorous testing at JPL, achieving results that exceeded expectations in creating a “dark hole” to reveal exoplanets. 

“The coronagraph performed even better than we’d hoped,” said Feng Zhao, deputy project manager for the Roman Coronagraph at JPL.

While past space coronagraphs have been limited, the JPL-developed Roman Coronagraph features active, movable components — a first for space. Two deformable mirrors, each backed by over 2,000 tiny pistons, can compensate for unwanted stray light and telescope imperfections.

These advancements could ultimately enable future missions to directly image Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars. NASA’s proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory, which aims to image at least 25 planets similar to Earth, builds upon the technology that the Roman Coronagraph will demonstrate.

“The active nature of the Roman Coronagraph Instrument allows you to take ordinary optics to a different level,” Poberezhskiy said. 

The Roman Coronagraph Instrument was designed and built at JPL, which manages the instrument for NASA. The Roman Science Support Center at California Institute of Technology/Infrared Processing and Analysis Center partners with JPL on data management for the Coronagraph and generating the instrument’s commands.