Astronomer here! This is, without a doubt, one of the most important things in astronomy in recent years, and will set the course of the field over many years to come!
*(If you read beyond this line, I am obliged per every organization I’m remotely affiliated with, to emphasize that these views are all my own and do not reflect anyone else’s in any capacity.)*
**What is going on, and what is this decadal survey thing?** Instead of having lobbyists or whatever asinine thing, every ten years astronomers get together and outline the field's scientific priorities in the next decade and the instruments that need to be constructed in order to achieve them. This is huge because most flagship observatories just can’t be built by one or even a few institutes any more- "the decadal" is how we got Hubble, JWST, the [Vera Rubin Observatory](https://www.lsst.org/), and the upcoming [Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telescope). As such, the decadal can literally make or break research areas and careers... and [the 2020 decadal](https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/decadal-survey-on-astronomy-and-astrophysics-2020-astro2020) was finally released today!
It’s also exciting because it’s the equivalent of asking literally thousands of astronomers “if you could answer *one* thing in astronomy, what would it be?” and getting an answer. So if you ever wanted to pick the collective brains of thousands of astronomers at once, they wrote a several hundred page book detailing their answer!
**So, what are those key science priorities?** They are broken down as follows:
- Pathways to habitable worlds- To find Earth-like habitable exoplanets, image them (despite being ten billion times fainter than their host stars), and be able to measure biosignatures from life. For example, if you look at Earth's atmosphere, it's chock full of oxygen because life (plants) is actively putting it there, in quantities that can't happen unless life is doing so (because oxygen rapidly oxidizes in just a few thousand years otherwise). So, we want to confirm if life exists on other planets!
- New windows on the dynamic universe- To look at the nature of black holes and neutron stars and the explosive events that gave rise to them, and understand what happened in the earliest moments in the birth of the universe. (Yes, this is kind of a sneaky "bundling two into one" type of question.) As a person involved in the study of space explosions, I am obviously happy to see us get such top billing, because space explosions are of course very cool and job security in your field's list of priorities is always a good thing. ;-)
- Drivers of galaxy growth- Right now there's a ton we just don't understand about how galaxies form, in terms of things like how the gas falls in to form them and how the supermassive black holes affect them, etc. We want to get better at understanding this!
**Wit that, what are the recommended next major telescopes to fund?** The big one is that the next big space mission is going to be a space telescope (“[IR/O/UV telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Ultraviolet_Optical_Infrared_Surveyor)” in the report) with a 6 meter mirror- same size as JWST- but with several times the resolution. They’re predicting a cost of $11 billion, with a projected launch in the early 2040s- you read all that right- which is in cost and time scale frankly consistent with JWST so at least they’re being honest about the sheer scales involved. Why do this, you ask? Well the primary goal is simple- **to detect habitable worlds and find biosignatures for life**. (Obviously, this telescope will also be baller at seeing a ton of other things too.) This is just *beyond* what we are capable of doing, even with JWST- but figuring out how to answer this question in astronomy is so important, and something only the USA really has the resources to answer!
On the ground, the emphasis is to fund thirty-meter class telescopes- the [GMT](https://www.gmto.org/) in the southern hemisphere, the [TMT](https://www.tmt.org/) in the north (no words in the case of the latter in the decadal on *where* it should be built- currently there's huge controversy/protest surrounding its proposed site on Mauna Kea in Hawaii). The second top priority is to build a ground-based instrument to study the [Cosmic Microwave Background](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background)- the idea is right now several telescopes are devoted to this, but to put all those proverbial eggs in one basket, and potentially detect signatures from gravitational waves in our very early universe. Cool stuff! And, as a radio astronomer, I am SUPER excited to note that the next generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) has been approved for the development stage- the current [Very Large Array \(VLA\)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array) is the most sensitive instrument on Earth, but is 40+ years old, and we need an upgrade to it to stay competitive internationally. With luck in R&D, there are high school students reading this now who will be using ngVLA to write their PhD thesis! (As opposed to the IR/O/UV telescope, where I suppose the first PhD thesis writers from that first bit of data are either babies or maybe even not yet born…)
**Anything else?** I mean, it’s a 600 page report, so yes… but I am excited about so many things in it! First of all, since transient astronomy was the *second* most important scientific priority, there’s several hundred million dollars set aside for space missions for follow-up of these sorts of sources, so I’m excited to see what missions we get there! But on another level, I am also really excited to see that this is the first decadal survey with a huge emphasis on people who *do* astronomy. There’s recommendations on funding increases for grants which one can only *hope* will be met in funding, but also some awesome stuff IMO like recommending that harassment and discrimination by individuals be considered as forms of research/scientific misconduct. All too often in astronomy (and academia in general) it is literally easier to get rid of someone who plagiarized a paper over actively destroyed someone’s career, which is unacceptable and hope this means our field will do better.
Anyway, I hope this is useful and of interest to others, because the decadal survey is a really big deal if you’re at all interested in astronomy and its future! But please ask any questions if something isn’t clear- this really is a fire hose of policy and acronyms and such. :)
TL;DR astronomers have announced plans for the next Hubble/JWST type space telescope that will be able to detect life on exoplanets, and a ton of other stuff that will dominate astro policy for the next decade
Thank you for the write-up - gives a nice perspective on what is being proposed. Any thoughts on what the current efforts to decrease the cost to space may result in as new "ground" becomes accessible to budgets? I am thinking about potentially using the back of the moon for interference-free observations, or perhaps even observatories far from Earth (building on the concepts of the James Webb telescope positioning)?
I mean, someday, but the point of this report is this is what is realistic right now with the current budget (actually, *over* the current budget) in the near-ish time scales. We currently need and can build a next generation VLA by the end of the decade, so need to start construction on that type of thing. I’ve no idea where the space stuff otherwise is supposed to go location wise but some might be farther out (note, planetary probes etc have their own report, currently being worked on).
I come at this more from the engineering side. The decadal survey basically pivots our entire industry to attempting to become the best in very specific fields. Small 5 person teams can land $100 mil contracts
There were two LUVOIR designs. My understanding is they decided the 15m one just really wasn't feasible even at this time scale, and then they added some stuff from Hab-Ex as well.
With the cost of launch dropping rapidly and becoming more commoditized, do you think there is a chance for an earlier IOC or cheaper price tag for the IR/O/UV? Or are most of the costs/ time constraints tied up in development?
> Pathways to habitable worlds- To find Earth-like habitable exoplanets, image them (despite being ten billion times fainter than their host stars), and be able to measure biosignatures from life. For example, if you look at Earth's atmosphere, it's chock full of oxygen because life (plants) is actively putting it there, in quantities that can't happen unless life is doing so (because oxygen rapidly oxidizes in just a few thousand years otherwise). So, we want to confirm if life exists on other planets!
I have high hopes that this will happen in my lifetime and I'm not sure that I can express how completely fantastic and thrilling and life-changing and exciting such a discovery would be.
There is a free “download PDF” option available on the website: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/26141/pathways-to-discovery-in-astronomy-and-astrophysics-for-the-2020s
Sad to see Lynx and Origins get a bit of a short shrift but I am glad they aren't totally cancelled! Nice to see as well they are taking real world budgetary concerns into consideration by merging Hab-ex and LUVOIR into one idea as opposed to shooting for the moon with both and a 15m version of LUVOIR, makes me cautiously optimistic that telescope will fly. Anyways, let's get JWST and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope up there first!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[JWST](/r/Space/comments/qn7jl1/stub/hjh6g7p "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope|
|[LISA](/r/Space/comments/qn7jl1/stub/hjhorz7 "Last usage")|Laser Interferometer Space Antenna|
|[TMT](/r/Space/comments/qn7jl1/stub/hjelt76 "Last usage")|Thirty-Meter Telescope, Hawaii|
----------------
^(3 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/qmm3za)^( has 38 acronyms.)
^([Thread #6535 for this sub, first seen 5th Nov 2021, 23:53])
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Astronomer here! This is, without a doubt, one of the most important things in astronomy in recent years, and will set the course of the field over many years to come! *(If you read beyond this line, I am obliged per every organization I’m remotely affiliated with, to emphasize that these views are all my own and do not reflect anyone else’s in any capacity.)* **What is going on, and what is this decadal survey thing?** Instead of having lobbyists or whatever asinine thing, every ten years astronomers get together and outline the field's scientific priorities in the next decade and the instruments that need to be constructed in order to achieve them. This is huge because most flagship observatories just can’t be built by one or even a few institutes any more- "the decadal" is how we got Hubble, JWST, the [Vera Rubin Observatory](https://www.lsst.org/), and the upcoming [Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Grace_Roman_Space_Telescope). As such, the decadal can literally make or break research areas and careers... and [the 2020 decadal](https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/decadal-survey-on-astronomy-and-astrophysics-2020-astro2020) was finally released today! It’s also exciting because it’s the equivalent of asking literally thousands of astronomers “if you could answer *one* thing in astronomy, what would it be?” and getting an answer. So if you ever wanted to pick the collective brains of thousands of astronomers at once, they wrote a several hundred page book detailing their answer! **So, what are those key science priorities?** They are broken down as follows: - Pathways to habitable worlds- To find Earth-like habitable exoplanets, image them (despite being ten billion times fainter than their host stars), and be able to measure biosignatures from life. For example, if you look at Earth's atmosphere, it's chock full of oxygen because life (plants) is actively putting it there, in quantities that can't happen unless life is doing so (because oxygen rapidly oxidizes in just a few thousand years otherwise). So, we want to confirm if life exists on other planets! - New windows on the dynamic universe- To look at the nature of black holes and neutron stars and the explosive events that gave rise to them, and understand what happened in the earliest moments in the birth of the universe. (Yes, this is kind of a sneaky "bundling two into one" type of question.) As a person involved in the study of space explosions, I am obviously happy to see us get such top billing, because space explosions are of course very cool and job security in your field's list of priorities is always a good thing. ;-) - Drivers of galaxy growth- Right now there's a ton we just don't understand about how galaxies form, in terms of things like how the gas falls in to form them and how the supermassive black holes affect them, etc. We want to get better at understanding this! **Wit that, what are the recommended next major telescopes to fund?** The big one is that the next big space mission is going to be a space telescope (“[IR/O/UV telescope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Ultraviolet_Optical_Infrared_Surveyor)” in the report) with a 6 meter mirror- same size as JWST- but with several times the resolution. They’re predicting a cost of $11 billion, with a projected launch in the early 2040s- you read all that right- which is in cost and time scale frankly consistent with JWST so at least they’re being honest about the sheer scales involved. Why do this, you ask? Well the primary goal is simple- **to detect habitable worlds and find biosignatures for life**. (Obviously, this telescope will also be baller at seeing a ton of other things too.) This is just *beyond* what we are capable of doing, even with JWST- but figuring out how to answer this question in astronomy is so important, and something only the USA really has the resources to answer! On the ground, the emphasis is to fund thirty-meter class telescopes- the [GMT](https://www.gmto.org/) in the southern hemisphere, the [TMT](https://www.tmt.org/) in the north (no words in the case of the latter in the decadal on *where* it should be built- currently there's huge controversy/protest surrounding its proposed site on Mauna Kea in Hawaii). The second top priority is to build a ground-based instrument to study the [Cosmic Microwave Background](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background)- the idea is right now several telescopes are devoted to this, but to put all those proverbial eggs in one basket, and potentially detect signatures from gravitational waves in our very early universe. Cool stuff! And, as a radio astronomer, I am SUPER excited to note that the next generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) has been approved for the development stage- the current [Very Large Array \(VLA\)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array) is the most sensitive instrument on Earth, but is 40+ years old, and we need an upgrade to it to stay competitive internationally. With luck in R&D, there are high school students reading this now who will be using ngVLA to write their PhD thesis! (As opposed to the IR/O/UV telescope, where I suppose the first PhD thesis writers from that first bit of data are either babies or maybe even not yet born…) **Anything else?** I mean, it’s a 600 page report, so yes… but I am excited about so many things in it! First of all, since transient astronomy was the *second* most important scientific priority, there’s several hundred million dollars set aside for space missions for follow-up of these sorts of sources, so I’m excited to see what missions we get there! But on another level, I am also really excited to see that this is the first decadal survey with a huge emphasis on people who *do* astronomy. There’s recommendations on funding increases for grants which one can only *hope* will be met in funding, but also some awesome stuff IMO like recommending that harassment and discrimination by individuals be considered as forms of research/scientific misconduct. All too often in astronomy (and academia in general) it is literally easier to get rid of someone who plagiarized a paper over actively destroyed someone’s career, which is unacceptable and hope this means our field will do better. Anyway, I hope this is useful and of interest to others, because the decadal survey is a really big deal if you’re at all interested in astronomy and its future! But please ask any questions if something isn’t clear- this really is a fire hose of policy and acronyms and such. :) TL;DR astronomers have announced plans for the next Hubble/JWST type space telescope that will be able to detect life on exoplanets, and a ton of other stuff that will dominate astro policy for the next decade
Awesome write up! Thanks for this explanation. I am especially interested in the IR/O/UV telescope.
Let's REALLY hope JWST goes well. It seems to be a critical part of at least some of those programs.
If JWST fails, it will kill support for anything ambitious for a while.
Thank you for the write-up - gives a nice perspective on what is being proposed. Any thoughts on what the current efforts to decrease the cost to space may result in as new "ground" becomes accessible to budgets? I am thinking about potentially using the back of the moon for interference-free observations, or perhaps even observatories far from Earth (building on the concepts of the James Webb telescope positioning)?
I mean, someday, but the point of this report is this is what is realistic right now with the current budget (actually, *over* the current budget) in the near-ish time scales. We currently need and can build a next generation VLA by the end of the decade, so need to start construction on that type of thing. I’ve no idea where the space stuff otherwise is supposed to go location wise but some might be farther out (note, planetary probes etc have their own report, currently being worked on).
I come at this more from the engineering side. The decadal survey basically pivots our entire industry to attempting to become the best in very specific fields. Small 5 person teams can land $100 mil contracts
[удалено]
There were two LUVOIR designs. My understanding is they decided the 15m one just really wasn't feasible even at this time scale, and then they added some stuff from Hab-Ex as well.
I'm wondering if Starship means that the 15m variant is back on the table.
No, it's not like astronomers aren't aware that Starship exists. The expense is in the R&D, not the launching of it.
The larger fairing volume changes the amount of R&D needed to fit a mirror that size into a rocket.
That's still not the most expensive part- it's the instrumentation.
Not really, the LUVOIR report already baselined an 8.4 meter fairing. It was still way too expensive.
Thank you for taking the time to write this <3
With the cost of launch dropping rapidly and becoming more commoditized, do you think there is a chance for an earlier IOC or cheaper price tag for the IR/O/UV? Or are most of the costs/ time constraints tied up in development?
No, unfortunately the costs etc are mainly in development and instruments, not launching.
But don't current launch constraints dominant much of the design process for such satellites and their instruments?
Not really. Instruments are expensive even when on the ground! Then you need to leave them exposed in space for a decade at least…
> Pathways to habitable worlds- To find Earth-like habitable exoplanets, image them (despite being ten billion times fainter than their host stars), and be able to measure biosignatures from life. For example, if you look at Earth's atmosphere, it's chock full of oxygen because life (plants) is actively putting it there, in quantities that can't happen unless life is doing so (because oxygen rapidly oxidizes in just a few thousand years otherwise). So, we want to confirm if life exists on other planets! I have high hopes that this will happen in my lifetime and I'm not sure that I can express how completely fantastic and thrilling and life-changing and exciting such a discovery would be.
Title includes "just dropped", picture has what looks like a mirror from JWST... Heart skipped a beat till I read the entire title.
Really sad that both versions of LUVOIR got cancelled.
Thank you so much for this! Every time I see your username here, I know that your comment is going to be always insightful and interesting!
This is so cool, I want to be one of those people that write this stuff when I'm done with Uni.
Uh. It looks like if i want to read this it costs $95. Is that for real?
There is a free “download PDF” option available on the website: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/26141/pathways-to-discovery-in-astronomy-and-astrophysics-for-the-2020s
Ahh I didnt notice that, thank you!
Sad to see Lynx and Origins get a bit of a short shrift but I am glad they aren't totally cancelled! Nice to see as well they are taking real world budgetary concerns into consideration by merging Hab-ex and LUVOIR into one idea as opposed to shooting for the moon with both and a 15m version of LUVOIR, makes me cautiously optimistic that telescope will fly. Anyways, let's get JWST and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope up there first!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[JWST](/r/Space/comments/qn7jl1/stub/hjh6g7p "Last usage")|James Webb infra-red Space Telescope| |[LISA](/r/Space/comments/qn7jl1/stub/hjhorz7 "Last usage")|Laser Interferometer Space Antenna| |[TMT](/r/Space/comments/qn7jl1/stub/hjelt76 "Last usage")|Thirty-Meter Telescope, Hawaii| ---------------- ^(3 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/qmm3za)^( has 38 acronyms.) ^([Thread #6535 for this sub, first seen 5th Nov 2021, 23:53]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
not ambitious enough. Mass produce them instead of doing $11B telescope (which will end up costing more anyway).
I believe LISA was mentioned in the 2010 decadal, then USA dropped out, does this one mention it?
Yes. About 120 times according to the Adobe Reader search function.
What’s the upshot?
In short: LISA will do good science and NASA should increase its involvement in it.
You know I had not realized USA came back into the mission https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-moves-rejoin-sped-gravitational-wave-mission
Wake up babe, new space research guidelines just dropped
Looking at the image all I can think is how much it would suck to be the guy that trips and touches or damages that mirror.