prepublication copy - The Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics ...

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Although the NASA Astrophysics annual budget has been as high as $1.5 billion in the past, 4 it is
currently approximately $1.1 billion and projected to remain flat in real-year dollars through 2015,
according to the President’s FY2011 budget, and to remain flat thereafter according to NASA input to the
committee. This implies a decrease in purchasing power over the decade at the rate of inflation. The
committee concluded that this budget outlook allows very little in the way of new initiatives until middecade,
by which time the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) should be launched and opportunities
for new funding wedges will open up. The committee also considered, as a basis for recommending a
program, a more optimistic scenario in which the budget is flat over the decade in FY2010 dollars.
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Although the overall NSF budget is promised to “double,” or increase by 7 percent each year for
10 years in real dollars, the agency input to the committee was that the Astronomy (AST) portion of the
budget would remain flat over the decade in FY2010 dollars (requiring approximately 3 percent growth
per year in real-year dollars). 5
In this case, once existing obligations are honored and operations at the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) rise to
the planned full levels by 2017, the committee found that the only way there can be any significant new
initiative is through very large reductions in the funding for existing facilities and budget lines.
Accordingly, the committee considered a more optimistic scenario that it believes to be justified given the
success and promise of the AST program at NSF. In this scenario, AST participates fully in the
aforementioned doubling of the NSF overall budget, and so its purchasing power would grow at 4 percent
per year for 10 years. This scenario was used by the committee as a basis for building its recommended
program.
In considering large ground-based construction projects, the committee assumed that the Major
Research Equipment and Facilities (MREFC) line would be appropriate for new AST-supported projects
to compete for—once ALMA is largely completed in 2012, and noting that $150 million of ATST
funding is still planned to be drawn from the line until 2017. The committee also noted that in practice,
an important limitation on the construction of new facilities under MREFC is the capacity of the AST
budget to provide appropriate running costs, including operations, science, and upgrades, once
construction is completed.
Department of Energy (DOE)
In seeking guidance on possible budget scenarios for activities that might be funded by DOE,
some in partnership with NSF Physics (PHY), the committee looked to the 2009 report from the High
Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) and its Particle Astrophysics Scientific Assessment Group,
PASAG) that reexamined current and proposed U.S. research capabilities in particle astrophysics under
four budgetary scenarios. The committee first adopted HEPAP-PASAG Scenario A, in which the total
budget is constant in FY2010 dollars. 6 It then considered as the basis for developing its program the more
optimistic third HEPAP-PASAG scenario, Scenario C, under which there is also a budget doubling.
4 This was during the time of peak expenditure on the James Webb Space Telescope.
5 Note that the NSF-AST budget did benefit from a one-time injection of $86 million in the American Recovery
and Reinvestment Act “stimulus” money in FY2009.
6 The HEPAP-PASAG report concluded that after allowance for a direct-detection dark matter program—not in
the purview of this survey—Scenario A did not provide enough resources to support major hardware contributions
to either LSST or JDEM.
PREPUBLICATION COPY—SUBJECT TO FURTHER EDITORIAL CORRECTION
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