The Roman Space Telescope Science Operations Center: Wide Field Instrument Data Processing and Products

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a 2.4-meter Hubble-class telescope and is NASA’s next flagship mission with a launch readiness in October 2026. Roman’s Wide Field Instrument (WFI) has 18 Teledyne H4RG-10 detectors totaling 302 megapixels, and will operate between 0.48 and 2.3 microns with wide-band photometry and wide-field slitless spectroscopy modes. With its unprecedented survey power combining a wide field of view (0.32 square degrees), survey depth (~26 – 28 AB magnitudes in imaging mode with 1 hour of exposure time), and high spatial resolution (FWHM ~0.11 – 0.18 arcseconds), Roman will execute both community-designed and general astrophysics surveys expected to yield nearly 20 petabytes of data in its five-year primary mission. The Roman Science Operations Center (SOC) at the Space Telescope Science Institute is responsible for the low-level science calibration data processing of all WFI observation programs, as well as high-level processing of most WFI imaging mode data. In this presentation, we will discuss: 1) the types of data products, i.e., uncalibrated, calibrated, and mosaicked images, as well as catalog data, the SOC plans to generate; 2) the science calibration pipeline (romancal) that will be used to generate those products; 3) the storage and distribution of Roman WFI data products via the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST); and 4) how the SOC plans for Roman scientists to work with WFI data in a cloud-based science platform.