Roman at AAS Home

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a NASA flagship mission planned for launch no earlier than September 2026. The Roman Space Telescope will perform breakthrough science in dark energy cosmology, exoplanet microlensing, and NIR sky surveys with its Wide Field Instrument. Roman will also feature the Coronagraph Instrument (CGI), a technology demonstration that will directly image and take spectra of exoplanetary systems using several novel technologies together for the first time in space. This session will cover the status of the project and upcoming opportunities for community involvement in planning and executing the science and technology demonstration aspects of Roman.

The NASA session will offer the Astrophysics science community an opportunity to interact with members of the leadership team and staff of the Astrophysics Division (APD) of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.  During the session, the APD Director will give a presentation on the current state of APD, followed by a Q&A period.  Topics will include recent scientific and technical achievements, current programmatic milestones and direction, and NASA’s progress towards implementing the recommendations identified in the Astro2020 Decadal Survey: Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s.

The coming decade of cosmology will be shaped by the transformative surveys of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, Euclid, SPHEREx, DES, and DESI. Realizing their full scientific potential requires sophisticated simulated skies -- catalogs and images that capture survey strategies, astrophysical complexity, and instrumental systematics at the level demanded by precision cosmology.

This special session will bring together developers and users of simulated data products that enable cosmological analyses of observational data. We aim to highlight end-to-end image simulations, mock galaxy and shear catalogs, synthetic spectrophotometric data sets, and cross-survey simulation efforts that support studies of dark energy, large-scale structure, weak lensing, and systematic-error control.

Beyond presenting existing products, this session will emphasize the infrastructure that makes the production of such simulations possible and sustainable. As survey data volumes and analysis complexity grow, coordinated infrastructure for simulation generation, validation, distribution, and reuse will be essential. Lessons learned from simulations and mock catalogs, including key systematics, for Stage 3 surveys (in particular, DES and DESI) will also be incorporated into the session. By fostering dialog between simulation builders and analysis teams, this session aims to help define a durable foundation for the next generation of cosmological simulations.

Roman Presentation:  Galaxy Simulations for the Roman High Latitude Survey (Diana Scognamiglio); 10:05 AM - 10:19 AM

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) serves the astronomical community through the operation of multiple NASA flagship missions including the Hubble, Webb, and Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescopes, the development of the MAST advanced data and science archives, including Kepler and TESS, and the dissemination of astronomical information to the broadest public audiences. Offering this breadth of resources to help the scientific community advance, STScI is the primary user interface for Hubble and Webb, and collaborates with IPAC, Caltech to provide community support for Roman.

The STScI Town Hall will serve as the center piece for our AAS 2478presence. We will report on the status of our existing and upcoming missions and describe new opportunities designed to advance astrophysics into the 2030s. In particular, we will focus on the upcoming launch of the Nancy Grace roman Space Telescope. We will highlight the software and cloud-based analysis tools that will are available to the community through the Roman Nexus and through the Mikulski Archive of Space Telescopes (MAST). We will include progress reports on Hubble and Webb and highlight synergies with the upcoming Habitable Worlds Observatory. We will include time for discussion to receive community input regarding new capabilities and to answer questions about our activities in the coming year

2026 marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory which started with a few “rocket-men” from the California Institute of Technology testing rocket engines in the canyons above Pasadena. Since those modest beginnings, JPL has partnered with NASA, Caltech, the broader scientific community, and industry to make seminal advances in solar system science, earth science, and astrophysics. From the US’s first orbiting satellite, Explorer 1, and humanity’s first interstellar probes, the still -operating Voyagers 1 and 2, to the first interplanetary helicopter and cryogenic telescopes, JPL has enabled breakthroughs across space science.
JPL’s technology and engineering expertise has been at the heart of these developments with JPL scientists providing the critical link between scientific aspirations and engineering reality. The session aims to increase the community’s awareness of JPL’s expertise across the wide variety of technologies critical to current or prospective missions. Attendees will have an opportunity to interact with JPL scientists, technologists and engineers to understand how JPL’s skills might be brought to bear on projects ranging in scope from Pioneer and Explorers to future flagships:

Speakers will link technological advances to past successes and future challenges:
1. Cryogenic expertise developed over four decades: from IRAS and Spitzer to WISE and the MIRI instrument on JWST, from SPHEREx to the proposed PRIMA Probe.
2. The development of high-performance imaging optical systems from WFPC-2 on the Hubble Space Telescope, the Coronagraph Instrument on the Roman Space Telescope and the future challenges of detecting a habitable Earth 2.0 with the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
3. The development of low noise detectors from submillimeter wavelengths to the ultraviolet.
4. The importance of robust system engineering to successful space missions, from small Explorers to NASA flagships.
5. How the scientific community partners with JPL to realize its scientific ambitions.

Roman Presentation:  Advanced Optics and Starlight Suppression: Exoplanets with JWST, Roman and HWO (Dimitri Mawet); 2:20 PM - 2:30 PM