Engineering and
Technology Directorate

Technicians recently tested two major deployments for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: the Deployable Aperture Cover (DAC) and the Solar Array Sun Shield (SASS). The DAC will protect Roman’s instruments before launch, then swing open once the telescope is in space. To simulate weightlessness, engineers…

Over the course of two days, eight technicians installed solar panels onto the outer portion of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Each of the six panels is about 23 by 33 feet (7 by 10 meters), fitted with photovoltaic cells which will harness energy from sunlight to power the observatory. The solar panels were…

Scheduled to launch in the early 2030s, NASA’s DAVINCI mission will explore Venus with both a spacecraft and a descent probe. DAVINCI’s probe will be the first in the 21st century to brave Venus’ atmosphere as it descends from above the planet’s clouds down to its surface…

Every day, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope moves closer to completion. This video highlights some of the important hardware milestones from this journey. Roman now exists as two main pieces…

 In September 2024, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope passed a key milestone and was approved for the next stage of construction. Work on the main systems that will make up the final spacecraft is finishing, and the team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center…

In April 2024, engineering technician Katrina Harvey prepared patches for NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer), an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station. The work took place in the Plating Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight…

This video shows Richard Koenecke, an engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, creating the body of one of the NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) patches.

In this first episode, the scientists and engineers at Goddard Space Flight Center embark on a new technological and scientific journey, building and sending a laser altimeter to Mars with the MOLA-1 Instrument.

The BurstCube mission team visits the magnetic calibration chamber at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, in this video. The first shot shows the exterior of the building. The ensuing shots show the interior. The grey beams are made from carbon fiber and are held…

This video shows NASA engineers securing the BurstCube satellite in a thermal vacuum chamber for testing. The first shot shows a thermal vacuum chamber lab at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt…

This video shows engineers conducting an open-sky test of the BurstCube satellite’s GPS at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This CubeSat will detect short gamma-ray bursts, brief flashes of the highest-energy form of light. Dense stellar remnants…

BurstCube is a mission developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The spacecraft is slated for takeoff in March 2024 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a resupply mission to the International Space Station.

NASA is using a simple but surprisingly effective technology called Laser Retroreflective Arrays (LRAs) to determine the locations of lunar landers more accurately. They will be attached to landers sent to the Moon as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) initiative. LRAs are inexpensive, small, and lightweight.

Embark on a cosmic odyssey with Frank Cepollina, a driving force behind the success of Hubble’s Servicing Mission 1. Discover firsthand accounts of his instrumental role in the mission, revealing the innovative solutions and relentless determination that revitalized the Hubble Space Telescope.

Every day, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope moves closer to completion. This video highlights some of the important hardware milestones from part of this journey. Components and systems are built separately, tested, and then integrated with larger parts of the spacecraft to carefully build the full telescope…