Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey
The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey is a review of astronomy and astrophysics literature produced approximately every ten years by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States. The report surveys the current state of the field, identifies research priorities, and makes recommendations for the coming decade. The report represents the recommendations of the research community to governmental agencies on how to prioritize scientific funding within astronomy and astrophysics. The editing committee is informed by topical panels and subcommittees, dedicated conferences, and direct community input in the form of white papers summarizing the state of the art in each subdiscipline. The most recent report, Astro2020, was released in 2021.
[...] The seventh report, released to the public at 11am ET on Thursday, November 4, 2021, recommended scientific priorities and investments for the next decade to help achieve the following primary goals: search for habitable exoplanets and extraterrestrial life, study black holes and neutron stars and study the growth and evolution of galaxies.
Astrophysics decadal survey recommends a program of flagship space telescopes
[The] report recommended NASA establish a Great Observatories Mission and Technology Maturation Program that would oversee initial studies of large "flagship" astrophysics missions as well as invest in the technologies needed to enable them.
"The survey committee expects that this process will result in decreased cost and risk and enable more frequent launches of flagship missions, even if it does require significantly more upfront investment prior to a decadal recommendation regarding implementation," the committee concluded in the 600-page report.
Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s. The 589 page report is paywalled.
Also at NPR.
(Score: 4, Informative) by RamiK on Sunday November 07 2021, @11:45AM (1 child)
https://doi.org/10.17226/26141 [doi.org] links to an online reader ( https://www.nap.edu/read/26141 [nap.edu] ) as well as a free pdf download ( https://www.nap.edu/download/26141 [nap.edu] ) where you just input a fake email address and click the relevant approve cookie checkbox and it downloads instantaneously without email verification.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Sunday November 07 2021, @12:25PM
There also a better link for the NPR [npr.org] article, Astronomers want NASA to build a giant space telescope to peer at alien Earths [npr.org].
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sgleysti on Sunday November 07 2021, @03:57PM (11 children)
Can someone explain to me why they only built one copy of the Hubble telescope, one copy of the James Webb telescope, etc.? The recommendations here are similar. One big telescope for each of a few different searches (I think 3 of those?).
I'm assuming that the difficulty of designing the thing and procuring all the equipment and facilities to test it is a large part of the cost. Perhaps I am incorrect? Is the cost of materials, construction, launch, and ongoing control of a space telescope the largest cost?
I'll bet they launch more than one spy satellite of each generation, for example.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kreuzfeld on Sunday November 07 2021, @07:00PM (10 children)
Two reasons: mainly money, but also priorities. If the US Congress decided to double (or more) NASA's budget, then NASA could conceivably build more than one of these. At typical funding levels, there's no way they could afford multiple copies of these and keep the rest of their activities on track.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07 2021, @08:14PM (4 children)
This whole exercise is basically a funding request. And anything that looks like it can justify aan SLS launch has the best chance of getting funding. Because pork.
It would obviously be better to pick one observation platform and build multiple copies, because when you're looking in one direction you're obviously not looking in the other, and you can do iterative improvements to the platform over the lifetime of the project. But that makes too much sense.
They're like kids with ADHD on sugar tots. Rather than pick one path and really study it, then 20 years from now pick another, they seem to suffer from FOMO.
(Score: 1) by kreuzfeld on Sunday November 07 2021, @11:30PM (3 children)
You're right that the Decadal Survey process is designed to drive funding priorities over the next ten years. As for the rest of your comment, it's a curiously simplistic (not to mention cynical and rather insulting) view of the matter. As just one counterexample: although you write that it would 'obviously be better to pick one observation platform and build multiple copies,' that ignores the fact that each observatory has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. Seven Hubbles might be great for optical and ultraviolet science, but it would mean zero capability in the mid-infrared (Spitzer, JWST) and zero high-energy capability (Chandra, Fermi, Nustar).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08 2021, @12:00AM (2 children)
Cynical? of course. look at the shitshow that is SLS. And of course the really badly managed James Webb project. Supposed to cost half a billion and launch in 2007, it's now at 9 billion (18 x the original budget) and 14 years late. For an expected lifetime of 5 to 10 years.
Poor management. One more "too big to fail" project that screwed over other projects by sucking up funding for 14 extra years. Imagine what research could have been done if it had been cancelled when it hit a billion?
(Score: 4, Informative) by PiMuNu on Monday November 08 2021, @12:25PM (1 child)
It's a fair point. Usually the sort of "buy in bulk" idea you propose is done, but serially. Build one, leverage the R&D to build an improved version for the next, etc The Mars programme, for example, is a bit along those lines. Build a widget, test it, launch it, upgrade to a better model, prototype novel bits of kit, launch it. Loop.
I don't know the physics goals so not sure why James Webb is not an iterative improvement on Hubble but rather a (fairly) different device altogether. Maybe they found that Hubble makes pretty pictures but there isn't much physics in visible spectrum?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08 2021, @01:23PM
I think it was because they've beat the hell out of the visible spectrum and that there is a trove of new science in the IR, particularly in spectral windows that can't be seen from the ground.
You can still get a lot of very interesting and useful stuff in the visible beyond pretty pictures.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 08 2021, @01:05PM (4 children)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 08 2021, @01:29PM (3 children)
If you haven't built it before, and it hasn't been built before, you don't order up a dozen of them. Space-qual hardware is expensive and long lead time, and the component testing is long as well. They will build two or three copies, which serve as the engineering models and flight spares, and they'll often keep a fully functional version in the lab (in this case, without the optics) to serve as a "flat sat" for testing and troubleshooting problems on orbit. It has nothing to do with cynical profit margins. It is also the reason that they fly on 10-year-old hardware/electronics. If it was pure profiteering, they'd keep upgrading it before launch a la the Microsoft model.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday November 08 2021, @03:44PM (1 child)
Because? When will they ever get stable enough scopes to build a dozen of them? To the contrary, I think they were ready to build multiple copies when they built Hubble back in the 80s. Maybe not a dozen, though with what has been spent on Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), they might have built a couple dozen.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Tuesday November 09 2021, @05:42AM
The obvious rebuttal is, well, it is a khallow objection, so really requires no rebuttal. Maybe just some subtle mockery?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 09 2021, @12:10PM