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FIGURE 5‐8 Number of PhDs per year resulting from sounding rocket programs between
1961 and 2008 (data compiled by the Astrophysics Sounding Rocket Assessment Team).
Credit: NASA ASRAT.
NSF Mid-Scale Innovation Program
Major new instruments and facilities have increased significantly in cost over the past 20 years.
To some extent this reflects scale and complexity. For example, instruments for 8-10-meter class groundbased
telescopes are necessarily larger and hence more costly than those for smaller telescopes.
Similarly, large focal plane arrays for radio telescopes are higher cost than the previous generation of
non-multiplexed receivers. Additionally, providing a significant enhancement over current capabilities
requires applying new and more expensive technology such as adaptive optics systems in the optical or
complex correlator systems in the radio. Finally, as data output increases to many terabytes, data
management and software complexity add to instrument and facility costs.
The funding mechanism within NSF for training young people in instrumentation and telescope
design, data analysis, and interpretation is through grants programs such as AAG, ATI, and MRI. These
have been relatively steadily funded over the past decade (Table 5-3). The NSF grants typically involve a
graduate student or postdoc who is learning about instrumentation, and the ~3 year grant duration is long
enough to cover much, but frequently not all, of a graduate student’s PhD-thesis years. The TSIP and
URO programs, described in Chapter 6, help provide the facilities for students to learn observing
procedures and develop new instrumentation. In Chapter 7 the committee recommends augmentations for
several of these programs. However, some of the most compelling science opportunities and
instrumentation frontiers⎯and therefore the areas of highest interest among young people⎯are beyond
the scales of even the largest of these programs.
A National Science Board report 14 and a National Academy report 15 both emphasized that NSF
14 “Science and Engineering Infrastructure for the 21st Century”, nsb02190 (2002)
15 “Advanced Research Instrumentation and Facilities” (2006).
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