[Dramatic music throughout]
[WFIRST]
[2010 Decadal Infrared Survey Telescope]
16 years ago,
the science community asked for an infrared survey telescope.
[Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Exoplanets]
And for the last ten years,
the best in the world
have been building it.
The pieces have come from all over:
small firms across the United States;
aerospace industry leaders;
research centers like JPL.
They took shape
and joined systems built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
one of the few facilities in the world
capable of handling a project
of this magnitude.
Here, the team assembled those pieces.
The Spacecraft Bus — holding everything
the observatory needs to thrive in space.
The High-Gain Antenna System —
communicating with Earth over a million miles away.
The Coronagraph —
performing magic with physics
to see distant worlds.
The Wide Field Instrument —
scanning the sky with a massive field of view.
And, the Primary Mirror Assembly —
the singular, light-catching eye.
They were joined with protective layers
that shield them from the intense glare of the Sun
and generate all the power the observatory will ever need.
Fully assembled, the observatory was subjected
to another battery of tests.
And then prepared for careful transport
to the Kennedy Space Center.
The final work at Kennedy is done
and the observatory is complete.
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
is ready for launch.
[Roman Space Telescope]
[NASA]