Roman fuel savings could more than double mission life

(SpaceEnergy) NASA says fuel savings from the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s first mid-course correction and other factors could more than double its potential operational lifetime to at least 22 years.

Roman’s 31 August trajectory-correction burn was executed with more than 99% accuracy and consumed about 18kg of propellant, less than 10% of the 200kg allocation. NASA estimates that saving alone could add roughly four years to the telescope’s potential lifetime.

A further roughly four years could come from additional propellant loaded before launch. Roman’s actual launch mass was 8,056kg, compared with the conservative 9,800kg maximum mass used for fuel budgeting, allowing its tanks to be filled to capacity.

“Since Roman’s was lower than we budgeted for, we were able to fill the propellant tanks to their capacity,” NASA Goddard Roman propulsion lead Alison Rao said.

NASA expects Roman’s second mid-course correction, planned for later in September, and its subsequent insertion into orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point to use less propellant than originally budgeted. Current projections attribute about another four years of potential operations to those expected savings.

Roman was designed around a five-year primary mission and five-year extended mission. At L2, it will require station-keeping burns about every 28 days.