Preparing for Launch and Beyond: Testing Roman’s Outer Barrel Assembly

Want to see this in even more detail? Watch the 57-minute version here: The Outer Barrel Assembly, or OBA, is a key part of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It is made of two main parts: the shell section, a baffled carbon-fiber tube that surrounds the telescope to keep the temperature stable and project it from stray light; and the support struts, which extend past the instruments to connect the shell section to the rear spacecraft bus where all the support systems are located. Although the OBA is one of the less complicated parts of the overall observatory, the testing process for it is anything but simple. This time-lapse covers one tiny part of the intricate dance that all of Roman’s systems have been working their way through on their path to joining together as the complete observatory. Just one of the many tests the OBA undergoes is static load testing in NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s 120-foot-diameter centrifuge. The two parts of the OBA are sep