How will NASA’s Roman Space Telescope see exoplanets?

image via New Scientist

August 28, 2026, 10:45 AM

• •NASA plans to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on August 30, 2026.
• •Roman’s Coronagraphic Instrument is designed to directly image exoplanets by blocking overwhelming starlight from their host stars.
• •The instrument uses multiple masks plus two deformable mirrors with 2,304 actuators each to correct optical jitter at nanometer precision.
• •Roman’s coronagraph should be able to detect planets next to stars that are hundreds of millions of times brighter than the planets themselves.
• •The telescope also includes low-resolution spectroscopy to study atmospheric molecules on some giant exoplanets.
• •The coronagraph is mainly a technology pathfinder for future missions such as NASA’s planned Habitable Worlds Observatory.

The article explains how NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will use its Coronagraphic Instrument to directly observe exoplanets despite the overwhelming glare of their host stars. Roman’s coronagraph combines shaped masks, wavefront sensing and deformable mirrors with thousands of actuators to suppress starlight and correct optical jitter with extreme precision. The instrument should be able to image some giant exoplanets and take low-resolution spectra that reveal atmospheric molecules, but it will work only on relatively bright nearby stars. The mission is presented as both a science project and a technology pathfinder for future observatories that may eventually directly detect Earth-like planets.

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