The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (shortened as Roman or the Roman Space Telescope, and formerly the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope or WFIRST) is a NASA infrared space telescope currently under development. Roman was recommended in 2010 by United States National Research Council Decadal Survey committee as the top priority for the next decade of astronomy. On 17 February 2016, WFIRST was approved for development and launch.
The original design of Roman, called WFIRST Design Reference Mission 1, was studied in 2011–2012, featuring a 1.3 m (4 ft 3 in) diameter unobstructed three-mirror anastigmat telescope. It contained a single instrument, a visible to near-infrared imager/slitless prism spectrometer.
The project is led by a team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Project scientist for Roman from its inception until his death in 2017 was Neil Gehrels, who was succeeded by Jeffrey Kruk, followed in August 2020 by Julie McEnery. The Project manager is Jamie Dunn, who succeeded Kevin Grady in late 2018. The Program scientist is Dominic Benford, and the Program executive is John Gagosian. The Formulation Science Working Group is chaired by the Project scientist, along with Deputy chairs David Spergel and Jeremy Kasdin.
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