Astromomy Wishlist

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A National Academy of Sciences panel released a report Friday recommending the development of a set of new observatories and other initiatives for the next decade of astronomical research, including a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and a giant ground-based observatory.

The report, "Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium", compiled a list of astronomical research priorities for the next decade and a $4.7-billion list of observatories and other projects that are best suited to deal with those research priorities.

At the top of the list of projects recommended by the panel was the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), a proposed successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Current designs of the NGST, proposed for launch in 2008, feature an 8-meter (315-inch) primary mirror, more than three times the size of the mirror on Hubble. The NGST would be optimized for observations in visible and infrared wavelengths of light.

Also highly recommended by the NAS panel was the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT), a proposal to build a 30-meter (98- foot) ground-based telescope using an array of mirror segments. The GSMT would be three times the size of the two 10-meter (33-foot) Keck Observatory telescopes in Hawaii, currently the largest optical telescopes in the world.

Additional space-based projects recommended by the panel included Constellation-X Observatory, an orbiting fleet of four x-ray telescopes that would serve as the follow-up to the Chandra X-ray Observatory; Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), a orbiting infrared interferometer designed to look for evidence of Earth-sized extrasolar planets; and the Single-Aperture Far Infrared (SAFIR) observatory, an 8-meter orbiting observatory that would work at longer wavelengths than NGST.

The panel also gave its endorsement to upgrades to the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico and the construction of the Large-aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope, a 6.5-meter (256-inch) telescope that would scan the sky once a week to look for near-Earth objects, supernovae, and other objects.

Several projects recommended by a similar panel a decade ago and currently in development were endorsed again by this committee. Those projects include the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), a space-based infrared telescope and the last of NASA's original four "Great Observatories"; the Atacama Millimeter Wave Array, a large international project to study the sky at millimeter wavelengths planned for Chile; the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), an airborne infrared observatory; and the Space Interferometry Mission, a precursor to TPF.

Those projects, as well as a number of smaller ground- and space-based projects, were selected by the panel since they would be best able to meet what the panel believes are the key scientific priorities for the field of astronomy in the coming decade.

Those priorities include determining the age and history of the universe and the amount of matter and energy within it; understanding what took place in the early history of the universe; studying the formation and evolution of black holes; understanding how planetary systems form and studying how the astronomical environment, such as Sun-induced "space weather", affects the Earth.

Such ambitious projects do not come cheap. The panel estimated the total cost of these projects to run $4.67 billion. Of that, more than half -- $2.76 billion -- would be allocated to the seven largest projects described above, including $1 billion for NGST alone. The total is about 20 percent greater than the total for the projects recommended for the last decade.

Not all the money would be sunk into new telescopes. The panel's highest recommendation for "small" projects, with a price tag of $60 million, is a proposal for a National Virtual Observatory that would make the large sets of data created by the various observing projects available to other scientists and the general public over the Internet. The panel also recommended additional support for educational outreach activities to students and the public.

Despite the seemingly-high price of such projects, the panel noted that the investment is needed if the United States is to remain competitive in the international arena, particularly in the field of ground-based astronomy. "Whereas the United States has been a leader in astronomical research during much of the twentieth century," the panel noted in its report, "other countries have advanced rapidly, so that in some cases their facilities are competitive with -- and for some purposes, even superior to -- U.S. facilities."

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