Roman Space Telescope SD Card Abrading and Bonding

A technician inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida installs a memory card containing a total of 1,350,144 names as part of a commemorative plaque on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on Friday, July 17, 2026. The names, submitted by people from across the globe, including astronauts from NASA’s Artemis II and Artemis III missions, will travel with the Roman observatory to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, or L2, about one million miles from Earth, where the Sun’s and Earth’s gravity balance out. Roman is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer and one of the architects of the agency’s modern science program.