92 region have been added to Zindra (the Adult continent).
Some parcels within these new regions have been allocated to former Gaeta 1 residents who expressed a wish to relocate the Zindra following the original announcement of the (now cancelled) closure of Gaeta 1.
The remaining regions will start to be released to the community commencing on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, from 12:00 noon SLT.
However, parcels will not be offered through the Mainland land auction service.
Instead, parcels will be released in batches over a period of time, with users given the opportunity to enter draws to purchase them.
Left: Zindra as it appeared in 2012 (and much of its life); Right; as it is with the additional 92 regions
How the Draw System Will Work
As per Mainland requirements, those interested in obtaining land in Zindra must have a Plus, Premium or Premium Plus Second Life subscription.
Note that adding a new Mainland parcel may increase your monthly tier depending on your current land holdings. If you have questions about how a parcel may affect your tier, the Land Operations team can help address them.
Parcel will be released in batches. For each batch:
Parcels will be of varying sizes, all aligning with Mainland tier levels.
Available parcels will have a kiosk placed on them as each batch is opened for a draw.
Interested parties can enter the draw for a specific parcel by clicking the Click To Enter button on the kiosk – only one entry per account will be allowed for each parcel.
Kiosks will be available for a time-limited period: 72 hours in the case of the first draw.
Please follow this thread for all release notices and to have general questions addressed.
Notification and acceptance of parcels:
Once the availability period has expired, the draw will take place at Linden Lab.
The successful entrant will be informed, and will then have 72 hours to visit the parcel and claim it via the About Land floater and making a payment of L$1 per square metre.
Those successfully obtaining a parcel in any particularly draw will be ineligible to participate in future draws in this release programme.
The following notes cover the key points from the Web User Group (WUG) meeting, held on Wednesday September 2, 2026. These notes form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. Pantera’s video is embedded at the end of this article, my thanks to her for providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Web User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion on Second Life web properties and their related functionalities / features. This includes, but is not limited to: the Marketplace, pages surfaced through the secondlife.com dashboard; the available portals (land, support, etc), and the forums.
Meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.
Web Services Updates
Responsive marketplace homepage:
LL is fixing small bugs but looking to start the next step in making marketplace responsive and cleaner.
Note that this work does more include significant changes to the homepage (e.g. how feature listings are highlighted, etc., as has been requested); it is purely about making the homepage load faster in the viewer, etc.
It was noted that this has resulted in the Best Selling element of the homepage being replaced by Trending Now – which is seen to have minimal relevance to creators / users, given it is based on a mix of things like search results rather than actual purchases.
The above led to a request for users to be able to select best selling over different time spans (e.g. the last week, month, quarter, etc.) to again remove bias.
Marketplace search clean up ran successfully and hopefully we’ll see improvements in search results and speeds as part of this rolling update – see here and here for more on this.
Marketplace internal refactoring and clean up – much of this should be unseen but result in fewer errors, less reporting errors, more performant search results and page loads.
Lindex sell survey – LL is trying to get a better understanding of how Linden dollars flow in the economy as they enter and leave
– Event Duplicate improvements (also see the questions asked of merchants, below).
Kermit Linde also reminded people of those with regions leased directed from LL of the L$ Payments for Land beta programme (at the time of writing, last updated, August 3, 2026).
Event listings are now limited to one event at one time at one parcel, in the hopes to prevent repeated event spamming (e.g. people using multiple accounts to spam the event listings with the same event, etc.). LL is also updating error handling around this so it’s clearer to users.
Work to add regions to search on maps.secondlife.com is in progress. There is some internal debate over region maturity ratings and exposing them via the web maps which still has to be addressed, given the web maps can be used without necessarily being logged-in to the SL website.
Outside of Paid Listing Enhancements and classifieds, how do you promote your products? Blogs? In world events? Advertising?
Responses included: Facebook; advertising at suitably-themed events; Discord channels; word-of-mouth; blogger reviews, dedicated store blog / websites; Flickr and similar.
If you are a merchant, what do you do to attract new customers? Do you consider new customers establish residents who just don’t buy from you, or new residents?
Both.
What would make it easier for a new resident to engage in the economy? Adding payment methods? Visibility? Maturity Ratings?
The above question led to a discussion on barrier to entry to the economy (e.g. linking accounts to a payment method – which many long-time users see as a barrier new users are wary of) versus the fact that many new users are coming into SL having seen “influencer” / creator videos on SL and so are aware and prepared to spend money on looks, etc., from the get-go.
As a purely personal opinion – assuming LL read these summaries:
I would suggest that asking such questions at WUG meetings is of limited value, as they are addressing a very closed group of regular attendees, so even as a straw poll, the meetings are of limited value in terms of representation.
If feedback is being requested of creators, better to ask through broader channels as – such as the official blogs – as formal surveys.
This would allow the community to directly pass the word to those wishing to respond through the forums, via bloggers raising their own posts on the subject, by users posting to social media, etc., with links to the survey, etc.
General Discussion
In terms of attracting new users, it was suggested the the change from “Join Us” to “Sign Up” on the various join buttons on various SL web properties could actually be putting potential users off on the grounds that “Sign Up” can sound more like a business-like / long-term commitment, where “Join Us” sounds warmer, friendlier and less of a major commitment.
This resulted in a conversation about apparent in terminology across various web properties, with some using “Sign Up”, some “Join Us” and some “Sign In”.
Whilst the mix of “Sign Up” and “Join Us” does suggest inconsistency, there is also the matter of target audience. For example: the Marketplace is primarily intended for existing SL user, so “Sign In” makes more sense than either “Sign Up” or “Join Us” if the user happened to be logged out of their SL account when they open the Marketplace.
A discussion on getting new users started – specifically centred on the Avatar Welcome pack, its limitations (and the reasons for them), lack of content support, attempts to address this by various creators / groups, etc., – again, please refer to the video.
A further question for creators was asked: which three avatar bodies would they like to be able to see added as a “works with” option in MP searches. The responses were:
Female: Reborn, Legacy (TMB), Maitreya.
Male: Legacy (TMB), Bellezza, Signature.
The above led to concerns over favouritism being shown towards specific brands, with the suggestion made that if a brand is to be listed as “works with” as a search option, then that brand must be sold on the MP (so the bodies would have to be listed).
Store blocking was raised: the ability to completely block MP stores and listings from a user’s Marketplace experience (e.g. to eliminate the multiple stores listing poorly-made, unoptimized AI generated content) from filling up search results, etc.
This led to a general discussion on AI generated content and managing it (e.g. if regulatory moves to watermark AIG content become law, whether such content can be auto-screened from SL, etc.).
Requests were made to separate star ratings from leaving reviews on the MP, and to provide Merchants with an image gallery capability for use in their stores.
Sitting within a Full private region, Yamato is a place I first visited in July 2026 and then returned to both in August and at the start of September 2026 whilst debating writing about it.
My dithering over blogging came down to a couple of things: access is somewhat restricted (visitors must have payment information registered with LL) – and I’ve taken a certain amount of flak in the past for Covering regions with restricted access. The other was because in July and August my visits left me feeling the region still might be undergoing build-out – a feeling which appears to have been correct and several details appear to have changed between my first and most recent visits.
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
The region has been designed by Somnous Corvinus and Len Teardrop on behalf of region holder Valefuth Delrove. It presents a Japanese-themed, mix-use setting, as indicated within its simple and direct Destination Guide entry:
Yamato, a quiet costal town, is a residential and social destination inspired by rural Japan during the 2000s.
– Yamato Destination Guide entry
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
As a residential / public setting, Yamato is reasonably engaging. The majority of the residential units appear to be around the edge of the region – mostly, but not exclusively, along the eastern side.
That said, there is a small town on the north-west side of the region which is open to exploration but does also include rental properties. Whilst sitting in their own parcels, there are not immediately obvious to the casual explorer, so some discretion is encouraged when exploring.
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
The Landing Point sits on a small dead-end road that runs towards the middle of the region from the little town and ending at a small shrine as it awaits visitors. This middle area of the region is largely open, forming something of a small park and an open field area, a dividing wall running between them.
Alongside of the little road is what appears to be a bus stop but is in fact the access to the rental office (located in the sky) for those interested in living within the region. Those finding their way up to this platform can return to the ground by walking into the table overlooking the platform’s shrine (the teleport is Experience-enabled).
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
A path marked by a marching line of Torii gates points southwards. Following it will take visitors down to a coastal Onsen with rock pools, waterfalls and a low bamboo fence separating from open waters and a stream while runs into running into it from inland.
The rest of the park separates the Onsen and town from the east-side residences. It is also itself split by a tram track emerging from a tunnel from where it apparently runs under part of the town before looping back to it overland.
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
This tram track leaves the upper side of the park richly wooded while the lower side an open field. Whilst this might at first appear to be lacking places to sit and spent time – look around and you will find some nice touches of detail nonetheless, including a nicely tucked-away place to spend time.
Across the road from the field is the beach, the southern end of which is open to the public.
Yamato – A Quiet Town, September 2026
In terms of attractiveness, it is the small details within Yamato which draw the eyes rather than any single large-scale elements within the region. Scattered throughout the setting, these are worth looking for as they do bring Yamato to life.
In all, a quiet little setting, interesting in design and making for a pleasant exploration – and possibly a new home for those seeking somewhere to live.
The Simulator User Group meeting place at Longfellow
The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, September 1, 2026 Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. These notes form a summary of the items discussed, and are not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the meeting by Pantera is embedded at the end of this summary – my thanks to her for providing it.
Meeting Overview
The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas is held every other Tuesday at 12:00 noon, SLT (holidays, etc., allowing), per the Second Life Public Calendar.
The “Leviathan Office Hour” meetings are held on the Tuesdays which do not have a formal SUG meeting, and are chaired by Leviathan Linden. They are more brainstorming / general discussion sessions.
Meetings are held in text in-world, at this location.
Simulator Deployments
No deployments this week, but all simhosts will be restarted.
The Nectarine update is due to be deployed to the BlueSteel RC channel on Wednesday, September 9, 2026 providing it encounters no issues during it time with QA.
The next update after that is codenamed Olive – details still TBD.
General Updates
Rider Linden is still working on a new version of the VSCode plugin.
He confirmed that the next update to the Lua Editor viewer (with Linux support) should see it officially become the 26.4 viewer and upped to a beta / RC version (a pre-release version of 26.4 is available on Github, but not that this will have a limited lifespan).
Leviathan Linden indicated that game_control is now “done” in terms of current development work:
Server-side support has been merged into the upcoming Nectarine simulator update.
The viewer-side code is now ready for merging into the main viewer Develop code base, although at the time of the meeting, this had yet to be done.
As a result of this, Leviathan plans to “get back to” his other workload – including a fix for the mesh face mismatch issue, the way avatars are now drifting more than should be the case when on a moving surface and the “crouch-drift misfeature” – see my notes from the last Leviathan Office hours for more on these latter issues.
Another item Leviathan Linden hopes to address is the Feature Request for llGetRegionWorldMapTile.
Monty Linden, speaking on Harold’s behalf on Lua:
There has been a Discord discussion on robustness around yielding and other concerns. As a result, Harold has posted a PR to Github, and is seeking feedback / comments.
Outside of this, work is focused on trying to find the difficult bits that are still outstanding to give a smooth ride to release, and it is planned to mov up to Luau 0.732.
There is currently no new Lua simulator available, although one is in development.
This news was followed by a general discussion on Lua issues, experiences with debugging scripts, capturing error information, etc., – please refer to the video.
Pepper Linden’s region crossing improvements should be (if not already) seeing a limited deployment to the Snack RC channel on the Main grid (Agni).
This sparked a general discussion on region crossings.
General Discussion
Please refer to the video for details on the following:
Kyle Linden threw out a request to anyone producing Lua content: if they are willing to share their work with the Marketing team, they may get featured in a Spotlight piece.
Leviathan Linden noted that whilst SVG/SVG text on a prim (see this Feature Request as an example) has been much-discussed in meetings, it is not something LL senior management is not particularly seized with.
The request was (yet again) made for larger region sizes – there are no plans for any such work to be undertaken for the foreseeable future.
A general discussion on programming languages which – outside of Lua /LSL had no major relevance on SL.
Leloo’s World Dancing Leaves, August 2026 – click any image for full size
As we wave bye-bye to August 2026, so thought for many in the northern hemisphere turn to the ending of summer and the onset of autumn, with many public locations within Second Life also changing to match the seasonal change.
One such place which has done just this is LeLooUlf’s Mainland setting as it straddles the regions of Laothoe and Gunda in the south of Heterocera. It’s a place I last visited in May 2026, not long after it had opened and when it had a decidedly spring / summer feel to it.
Leloo’s World Dancing Leaves, August 2026
LeLoo’s World – Dancing Leaves is a place where the season wraps around you, inviting you to wander, breathe deeply, and feel the calm magic of fall. Enjoy a peaceful stroll along the lakeside, complete with its charming balloon tour, or wander into the adjoining woodland paths. Throughout the area, you’ll discover cosy spots perfect for capturing those special autumn photos.
– From the Destination Guide entry for Leloo’s Mainland world
Now called Dancing Leaves to mark the seasonal change – and as recorded in its Destination Guide entry -, the setting still straddles the two regions but now has a more unified Landing Point than was the case at the time of my May 2026 visit.
Leloo’s World Dancing Leaves, August 2026
Also in keeping with the design at the time of my last visit, there is a sharp divide between the north and south extents of the setting – the latter being greatly elevated when compared to the former, with the two having individual Shared Environments.
However, I was so taken by the EEP setting used for the northern half of Dancing Leaves (and which is active for visitors when arriving at the Landing Point); I maintained it whilst photographing both.
Leloo’s World Dancing Leaves, August 2026
The northern aspect of the setting pushes its way out from stepped cliffs into a wide, circular lake, the majority of which is neatly landscaped, allowing Dancing Laves to now smoothly merge with it, whereas at the time of my original spring visit, there are more of a sharp divide between Leloo’s land and that of her neighbours.
To the west side, a flat finger of land runs out into the waters of the lake from the base of the cliffs, home to a trio of wooden buildings. All are open to the public and form, respectively, a small café, a summer house and a little potting shed / greenhouse.
Leloo’s World Dancing Leaves, August 2026
The eastern side of the land is more broken forming a trio of islands reaching into the lake, connected one to the next and to the land below the cliffs by a series of bridges.
No formal buildings stand on any of these islands, although two are home to gazebos and the third has a windmill sitting on its back. The outermost of these islands sits across the head of Leloo’s land and has a raised bridge connecting it back to the western finger of land, allowing the waters here to be circumnavigated.
Leloo’s World Dancing Leaves, August 2026
All around (and on!) the waters here are places to sit, while an orca surprisingly frolics alongside one of the bridges, ready to splash those crossing it, and the inner, shallow waters are home to a variety of fish.
And don’t miss the little “coffee grotto” tucked under the cliffs complete with a sign I can well understand and appreciate!
Leloo’s World Dancing Leaves, August 2026
At the top of the cliffs and alongside the Landing Point is the local balloon tour – instructions provided on the sign next to it. This gently floats around the lake and is suitable for singles or couples. It doesn’t cross the region boundary into the southern aspect of the setting, so you’ll have to re-engage your pedal extremities to explore here.
Although called “The Woodland” at the Landing Point, the southern, upper part of the setting is more an open garden. Whilst completely rebuilt, it nevertheless carries within it the spirit of the spring / summer build for those who have previously visited.
Leloo’s World Dancing Leaves, August 2026
This is a place for gentle wandering, the colours very much those of early autumn, when the greens of summer vie with the browns, golds, yellows and reds of the fall months. Grassy paths invite exploration. One of these connects to the local road as it passes the setting, whilst the other reaches towards the raised southern end of the garden.
This path winds gently past a small pond to one side, watched over by a vigilant owl and a cube-like garden house as it forms a quiet little retreat.
Leloo’s World Dancing Leaves, August 2026
As with the lakeside areas, the gardens offer many places to sit and pass the time – some perhaps more obvious than others (don’t miss the bee hives wither their novel pose / sit point or the little gazebo ticked away to one side of the garden!).
I particularly like the southernmost end of the garden with its clock and shaded benches and piano – although perhaps it might benefit for a couple more places to sit.
Leloo’s World Dancing Leaves, August 2026
My only niggle with Dancing Leaves is the presence of the billboard sitting between the Landing Point and the archway to the road, which I feel loudly intrudes into an otherwise peaceful location. Fortunately, I never travel without Derender in my pocket, so it was easily taken care of 🙂 .
This aside, I genuinely love Leloo’s work both on the Mainland and with her region. She puts a huge amount of time and care into building very special places for people to visit, and I’m always more than happy to drop into them and just relax. I’m pretty sure you’ll feel the same way as well!
The SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster carrying the 9.1 tonne Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope towards orbit, transiting the morning Sun as it rises over the Florida coastline, August 30, 2026. Credit: Josh Dinner
August 30th, 2026 saw the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope – potentially the most important space-based observatory yet launched from Earth, and the telescope which is genuinely the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in terms of its mission and capabilities.
Also called the Roman Space Telescope (RST – which is how I’ll be referring to it going forward), the telescope has a multi-purpose mission and will seek to increase our knowledge in a number of areas. And it has been a long time coming.
RST: A Brief History of a Telescope
RST’s history goes back to the 2010 United States National Research CouncilDecadal Survey committee, which recommended a new space telescope with a focus on studying dark energy (not to be confused with dark matter, which is an entirely different concept!). In its original design, the telescope would carry a single large instrument, the WFIRST (Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope) with a 1.3 metre primary mirror.
However, in 2012, the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) offered NASA two “Hubble-class” telescope systems with 2.4 metre diameter primary mirror (the same as Hubble), but with a shorter focal length (allowing them to see far more of the night sky. One of these two units was folded into the new space telescope concept, which became the WFIRST-AFTA (Astrophysics Focused Telescope Asset), allowing the new telescope’s mission to be expanded and a portion of the overall cost of the mission – the design and fabrication of the actual telescope – to be largely eliminated.
The Roman Space Telescope structure. Credit: NASA/GSFC
The WFIRST mission was refined over the next few years, with initial funding in 2014 (US $54 million) allowing conceptual studies to be undertaken for the hardware, software, and mission objectives to be completed, with a further US $50 million added to this in 2015. By 2016, the overall science and technical parameters for the mission were in place:
Primary mission duration: 5 years post-launch, at $2.7 billion, including all development, fabrication and launch costs and 5 years of science operations.
Scientific studies:
Answering basic questions about dark energy – is the expansion of the universe caused by a new energy component, or the breakdown of Einstein’s general relativity; if a new energy, is it constant, or evolving with the universe? In this work, RST will be working alongside the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Euclid
Carrying out a census of exoplanets down to the size of our Moon using gravitational microlensing, whilst examining questions about the commonality of planetary systems, what determines an exoplanet’s habitability, etc.
Using a coronagraph to obtain the first direct images and spectra of very large planets orbiting our nearest neighbours.
Detecting primordial black holes.
Operational location: Sun-Earth Lagrange L2 halo orbit, roughly 1.5 million km from Earth.
A graphic showing the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s (still called WFIRST) flight to, and orbit around, the Sun-Earth L2 position. Credit: NASA
These studies would be enabled by just two major instruments on the telescope – then still called WFIRST. The first of these is the Wide-Field Instrument (WFI) – essentially a 300-megapixel camera supported by a series of specialised wide- and narrow-band filters which will allow the high-quality imaging of large parts of the sky around the telescope as well as focused imaging of specific groups of stars or of star systems from the visible to near-infrared. The second is the Coronagraph Instrument (CGI), a high-contrast coronagraph designed to suppress the light of stars to allow the imaging and spectrographic analyses of planets and their atmospheres as close as 0.15 arc seconds from their parent star.
Renamed the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in 2020, the project has survived two attempts to cancel it under the Trump Administration, the impact of the COVID pandemic and, most recently, the somewhat premature and chaotic approach to shutting-down various programmes and operations at Goddard Space Flight Centre, the lead NASA centre for the mission, the RST project has remained largely on-time and has avoided going grossly over-budget (US $3.2 billion compared to the estimated US $2.7 billion).
Who Was Nancy Grace Roman?
Dr. Nancy Grace Roman (May 2025 – December 2025) was one of America’s leading astronomers and NASA’s first female executive, being the agency’s Chief of Astronomy through the 1960 and 1970s.
From an early age, she knew she wanted to be an astronomer; actually founding her own astronomy group at school at the age of 11. Encouraged by her music teacher mother and physicist-mathematician father, she enrolled in an accelerated astronomy programme designed to prepare late-coming high school students for college-level astronomy before attending the private Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, from which she hoped to graduate to university.
Dr. Nancy Roman with a model of Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO) 1 in 1962. Credit: NASA
At Swarthmore, the head of astronomy, Peter van de Kamp, was initially unimpressed with Roman’s desire to be an astronomer. However, after she had rebuilt two defunct student telescopes – work which she later felt contributed greatly to her innate ability as both an astronomical observer and in understanding instruments and technology – and seeing her dedication to research at the college’s observatory, he relented. He started personally teaching her astrometry – his own specialist field – before helping her obtain a position studying astronomy at the University of Chicago in 1946.
At Chicago she studied under three professors, including William Wilson Morgan. Whilst initially cold towards Roman, Wilson recognised her potential as she developed her PhD dissertation in 1949. Following her graduation, he invited her be his research associate. Thus began her career as a professional astronomer.
Yerkes Observatory, operated from its founding in 1897 through until 2018 by the University of Chicago, where Dr. Nancy Roman worked as an associate researcher with William Wilson Morgan. Credit: J. Takermann
Initially focusing on stellar observations and research, Roman also took up lecturing, enjoying both roles. In the 1950s, and whilst still at the university, she became engaged in research on behalf of the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL – among other things, and despite its title, a leading astronomical research institute), and many of her papers of stellar astronomy became the most respected and most-cited, both nationally and internationally, throughout the 1950s.
Her fascination with instruments and technology led her to becoming one of the first advocates for the use of computers for digital image processing. Taking her ideas to the university’s Chair of Astronomy at the University of Chicago – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar – she was told in no uncertain terms computers had “no place” in the field of astronomical observations and to stop wasting her time on such ideas.
It was around this time that Roman realised her academic career had hit a glass ceiling; universities almost never extended senior astronomy-related academic positions to women, nor offered them tenured research positions. As a result, she opted to leave university life and join the NRL, at that time a pathfinder in the relatively young field of radio astronomy.
Here she further enhanced her reputation as a both a stellar researcher and as a leading expert in the field of microwave spectroscopy. She also carried out pioneering work in the field of geodetics, which led to a request that she consult on the science programme for Project Vanguard in 1957, the NRL’s government-directed response to Russia’s Sputnik. This tweaked her interest in the potential for space-based astronomy, causing her to write several papers on the subject. Then, in 1959, she was approached with a request to create and lead a programme for space-based astronomy for the newly-formed NASA; a request which caused her some mixed feelings, as she recounted in later life:
I was not sure I wanted this NASA position… Taking a management position would mean giving up research. I had left teaching, which I enjoyed, when I left the University of Chicago and was not sure that I wanted to give up research… However, the chance to start with a clean slate to map out a programme that I thought would influence astronomy for fifty years was more than I could resist.
– Nancy Grace Roman, 2018
And so she joined NASA, initially as Head of Observational Astronomy, before rising to Chief of Astronomy at NASA’s Office of Space Science within a year.
At NASA, Roman pioneered virtually the entire astronomy programme, including selecting projects for study / execution as missions or parts of missions, overseeing budgets, recruiting staff, and so on. The post initially saw her encounter hostility from an astronomical community outraged at the idea that NASA was “sticking its nose” into their fields of study and potentially “stealing” grants and funding Earth-based observatories would otherwise receive. Her response to this was to implement a series of policies which NASA has since adhered to, placing the astronomical community as a whole at the heart of the agency’s astronomical programmes, both as participants and beneficiaries. In doing so, she not only ended the enmity, she turned the astronomical world into one of NASA’s most committed supporters.
Whilst not an original proponent of space-based telescopes, Nancy Grace Roman was the woman who brought them to reality through two long-running programmes. The first was the successful Orbiting Solar Observatory programme (OSO, 1961-1975), with eight such observatories were launched to study the 11-year sunspot activity in both UV and X-ray wavelengths. This was followed by the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory programme (OAO, 1966-1972). The second of these – OAO-2 Stargazer – became the world’s first successful deep-space orbital telescope, collecting data on galaxies, stars, planets and comets.
Dr Nancy Roman explains the Advanced Orbiting Solar Observatory to astronaut “Buzz” Aldrin in 1965. Credit: NASA
This pioneering work, together with the Small Astronomy Satellites of the 1970s convinced Roman of the viability of a large-scale orbital telescope, and for the last few years of her primary career at NASA, she devoted herself to bringing such an observatory – then simply called the Large Space Telescope (LST) – and its supporting infrastructure, into being.
This work directly led to the Hubble Space Telescope, the first of NASA’s first four Great Observatories. And not only did she directly help formulate the programme which would become Hubble, she became the voice that “sold” the entire idea to astronomers and the science community, who in turn sold it to the US government.
Regretfully, history has forgotten a lot in today’s Internet age, but it was Nancy in the old days before the Internet and before Google and e-mail and all that stuff, who really helped to sell the Hubble Space Telescope, organise the astronomers who eventually convinced Congress to fund it. Nancy Grace Roman was the Mother of the Hubble Space Telescope.
– Edward Weiler, HST Chief Scientist, 1979-1998, and speaking in 2011
After 21 years with NASA, Roman officially retired in 1979, although she continued in a consultancy position overseeing the implementation of one of the most influential factors of the Telescope’s mission: the implementation of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which initially oversaw Hubble operations and science programmes, then took on the James Webb Telescope (JWST) following its launch and commissioning, and which will now also manage the RST.
Following this, she entered the private sector, only to return to NASA for two years in 1995 as the head of the Astronomical Data Centre at Goddard Space Flight Centre. Following her second NASA retirement, she turned to teaching for 3 years before spending 10 years (2000-2010) recording astronomical textbooks for Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic.
Sadly, Nancy Grace Roman passed away in 2018, before seeing NASA’s latest space-based observatory fittingly named for her.
RST Launch Highlights
Lift-off: 11:26 UTC, Launch Complex 39A, Kennedy Space Centre.
Launch vehicle: SpaceX Falcon Heavy Block 5.
Side booster separation: 2.5 minutes after launch, boosters recovered to Space Launch Complex 40 and Landing Zone 2, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS).
Core booster: expended, Atlantic splashdown, no recovery.
11:54 UTC: second stage engine re-light and burn (3 minutes).
11:57 UTC: RST deployment from Falcon Heavy upper stage. Launch and deployment complete.
While both of the side boosters from the rocket made successful landings, only one booster was actually filmed making a touchdown. This is because SpaceX had turned on the cameras at landing Zone 1, CCSFS rather than Landing Zone 2 in error!
A camera on the Falcon Heavy upper stage monitoring the burn of the single Merlin engine capture the moment one of the jettisoned payload fairings is left behind, hanging over the limb of the Earth. Credit: SpaceX
RST: Current Status and what’s Next?
Following separation from the Falcon Heavy upper stage, RST commenced a 90-day transit out to its Sun-Earth L2 halo orbit. Ninety minutes after launch, the observatory successfully deployed its combined Solar Array Sun Shield (SASS) designed to both help protect its electronics and instruments from the Sun’s heat and convert that solar energy into electrical power for those instruments and systems.
Over the next few days / weeks the following will occur:
Days:
Complete an initial “mid-course” correction to fine-tune its trajectory (within 24 hours of launch).
Deployment and testing of the main high-gain communications antenna, capable of transferring 1.4 terabytes of data from the observatory to Earth per day.
Unfurling and testing of the deployable aperture cover designed to protect the telescope’s optics from the glare of the Sun during certain periods of operation.
Initial power-up of the Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) and circuitry test, to be followed by pre-commissioning testing and calibration.
Weeks:
Initial power-up of the Wide Field Instrument (WFI) and circuitry test, to be followed by pre-commissioning testing and calibration.
Second mid-course correction.
Science instruments initial commissioning (starting approx. 45 days into transit).
A rendering of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in operation. From the left: the silver deployable aperture cover in its open position at the front of the observatory. Middle: the black outer barrel protective cover protecting the science instruments, telescope optics and electronics, with the unfolded solar arrays (mottled brown panels on the top) and triple heat radiator (silver) over the circular spacecraft bus assembly, and on the extreme right, the unfolded high-gain antenna on its positional arm. Credit: NASA.
When operational, the WFI will be capable of capturing images of up to 1 billion pixels, capturing views of space 100-125 times wider than can be achieved by Hubble and with far greater clarity thanks to the use of 18 4K resolution detectors within the camera’s imager. The current commissioning plan means that RST will commence formal science operations in early 2027.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 