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observatories. For NASA an annual budget of $5 million is recommended. For DOE an annual funding level of $1 million is recommended for activities related to space-based research. Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Ground Projects – Large – in Rank Order LSST is a multipurpose observatory that will explore the nature of dark energy and the behavior of dark matter, and will robustly explore aspects of the time-variable universe that will certainly lead to new discoveries. LSST addresses a large number of the science questions highlighted in this report. An 8.4-meter optical telescope to be sited in Chile, LSST will image the entire available sky every 3 nights. Over a 10-year lifetime, LSST will be a unique facility that, building on the success of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, will produce a 100 billion megabyte publicly accessible database. The project is relatively mature in its design. The appraised construction cost is $465 million, of which the NSF and DOE portions are recommended at one-third each, with the remaining third coming from international and private partners. The annual operations costs are estimated at $42 million, of which $28 million is recommended to be split between NSF and DOE. The committee recommends that LSST be submitted immediately for NSF’s Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) consideration with a view to achieving first light before the end of the decade. Independent review judged the cost and schedule risk, as well as the technical risk, to be medium low. The top rank accorded to LSST is a result of (1) its compelling science case and capacity to address so many of the science goals of this survey and (2) its readiness for submission to the MREFC process as informed by its technical maturity, the survey’s assessment of risk, and appraised construction and operations costs. Having made considerable progress in terms of its readiness since the 2001 survey, the committee judged that LSST was the most “ready-to-go.” Mid-Scale Innovations Program New discoveries and technical advances enable small to medium-scale experiments and facilities that advance forefront science. A large number of compelling proposed research activities submitted to this survey were highly recommended by the Project Prioritization Panels, with costs ranging between the limits of the NSF Major Research Instrumentation and MREFC programs, $4 million to $135 million. The committee recommends a new competed program to significantly augment the current levels of NSF support for mid-scale programs. An annual funding level of $40 million per year is recommended—just over double the amount currently spent on projects in this size category through a less formal programmatic structure. The principal rationale for the committee’s ranking of the Mid-Scale Innovations Program is the many highly promising projects for achieving diverse and timely science. Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT) Transformative advances in optical and infrared (OIR) astronomy are now possible by building adaptive optics telescopes with roughly 10 times the collecting area and up to 80 times the near-infrared sensitivity of current facilities. These observatories will have enormous impact across a large swath of science and will greatly enhance the research that is possible with several other telescopes, especially JWST, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), and LSST. A federal investment to provide access for the entire U.S. astronomy and astrophysics community to an optical-infrared 30-meter-class adaptive optics telescope is strongly recommended. Two U.S.-led projects, the Giant Magellan Telescope PREPUBLICATION COPY—SUBJECT TO FURTHER EDITORIAL CORRECTION 1-10
(GMT) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), are being developed by international collaborations led by U.S. private consortia. The committee recommends that a choice between the two projects be made as soon as possible for a federal partnership at a level of about a 25 percent investment in one of them. A schedule and budget plan should then be developed. The survey appraises a total GSMT construction cost in the range of $1.1 billion (GMT appraisal) to $1.4 billion (TMT appraisal) and assumes that the federal share of the capital cost will be borne by MREFC, while recognizing that the total share may be secured through whatever combination of capital cost, operating funds, and instrumentation support is most favorable. The operations federal cost share is expected to carried by NSF-AST. Both telescope projects estimated their annual operations costs (including facility and instrument upgrades) at around $50 million ($36 million, GMT; $55 million, TMT). Although the committee did not analyze these estimates in detail, they are far below the usual rule of thumb for large projects (10 percent of construction costs per year). The committee believes that a GSMT will, as large telescopes have in the past, transform U.S. astronomy because of the telescope’s broad and powerful scientific reach, and that federal investment in a GSMT is vital to U.S. competitiveness in ground-based optical astronomy over the next two decades. These are the main reasons for the committee’s strong recommendation of GSMT. The third-place ranking also results from the requirement in the committee’s charge that the survey’s prioritization be informed not only by scientific potential but also by the technical readiness of the components and the system, the sources of risk, and the appraisal of costs. LSST and several of the concatenation of candidates for the Mid-Scale Innovations Program were deemed to be ahead of GSMT in these areas. The committee also took into account programmatic concerns such as the time it will take to implement the committee’s recommendation for a choice to be made on which one of the two U.S.-led GSMT concepts NSF will partner, and the time it would take for any MREFC decision to be made and federal funds awarded. The committee’s setting of the relative positions of its top three ranked activities resulted from its consideration of all these various factors. Atmospheric Čerenkov Telescope Array (ACTA) The past decade has seen the coming of age of very high energy tera-electron-volt (TeV) gammaray astronomy. Plans are underway to capitalize on recent scientific advances by building a large facility that uses light created as gamma rays interact with the atmosphere and that will achieve an order-ofmagnitude greater sensitivity compared to current telescopes. This new gamma-ray observatory will detect a wide variety of high-energy astrophysical sources and seek indirect evidence for dark matter annihilation. Two facilities, the European Cerenkov Telescope Array (CTA) and the U.S. Advanced Gamma-ray Imaging System (AGIS), have been proposed. The survey appraised the full AGIS project cost to be in the $400 million range. The technical risk was judged to be medium low. The committee recommends that the U.S. AGIS team collaborate as a minor partner with the European CTA team and that a U.S. budget for construction and operations of approximately $100 million over the decade be shared between DOE, NSF-Physics, and NSF-Astronomy. The recommendation for ongoing U.S. involvement in TeV astronomy is based largely on the demonstrated recent accomplishments of this field and the prospect of building fairly quickly a much more capable facility to address a broad range of astronomy and physics questions over the next decade. Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope (CCAT) Ground Project – Medium CCAT is a powerful wide-field-of-view 25-meter telescope to be constructed at a high site in Chile just above the ALMA site. CCAT will perform sensitive millimeter and submillimeter imaging PREPUBLICATION COPY—SUBJECT TO FURTHER EDITORIAL CORRECTION 1-11
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Page 4 and 5: THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fi
Page 7 and 8: COMMITTEE FOR A DECADAL SURVEY OF A
Page 9 and 10: Panel on Stars and Stellar Evolutio
Page 11 and 12: DOUGLAS FINKBEINER, Harvard Univers
Page 13: SPACE STUDIES BOARD CHARLES F. KENN
Page 16 and 17: activities 2 that have emerged from
Page 18 and 19: In addition to the 27 panel meeting
Page 20 and 21: Acknowledgment of Reviewers This re
Page 22 and 23: The Accelerating Universe 2-26 The
Page 24 and 25: APPENDIXES A Summary of Science Fro
Page 26 and 27: light up the universe, marking the
Page 28 and 29: RECOMMENDED PROGRAM Maintaining a b
Page 30 and 31: TABLE ES.4 Space: Recommended Activ
Page 32 and 33: Cosmic Dawn: Searching for the Firs
Page 34 and 35: this imprint would both probe funda
Page 36 and 37: important outcome will be to open u
Page 38 and 39: estimated to be on the order of $20
Page 42 and 43: surveys of large fields, enabling s
Page 44 and 45: RECOMMENDATION: U.S. investors in a
Page 46 and 47: departments and the community as a
Page 48 and 49: dominate spending; (2) private-publ
Page 50 and 51: us was certainly evident during the
Page 52 and 53: BOX 2-1 Other Worlds Around Other S
Page 54 and 55: FIGURE 2‐2 The source 3C 75, show
Page 56 and 57: FIGURE 2‐3 Numerical simulation o
Page 58 and 59: FIGURE 2‐4 Left panel: Image of t
Page 60 and 61: FIGURE 2‐6 Top: Schematic of the
Page 62 and 63: Most stars with masses smaller than
Page 64 and 65: BOX 2-2 The Origin of Planets After
Page 66 and 67: send material raining into the cent
Page 68 and 69: BOX 2-4 Lifecycles in Galaxies One
Page 70 and 71: Stars Stars are the most observable
Page 72 and 73: ubiquitous high-energy charged-part
Page 74 and 75: The Nature of Inflation As describe
Page 76 and 77: FIGURE 2‐11 Pie chart showing the
Page 78 and 79: An important clue to the nature of
Page 80 and 81: Studying the properties of neutron
Page 82 and 83: FIGURE 2‐14 A possible pathway is
Page 84 and 85: partners and makes recommendations
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Page 88 and 89: are increasingly relevant. The Euro
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TABLE 3-1 Currently Operating OIR F
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29% 1990 44% US Priv US Fed Other E
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CONCLUSION: Complex and high-cost f
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Space Observatories The Laser Inter
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Physics Division (PHY); the Mathema
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4 Astronomy in Society Astronomy of
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FIGURE 4‐2 The dust sculptures of
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FIGURE 4‐5 President Obama takes
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Astronomy Inspires in the Classroom
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teaching the scientific method. The
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where the fraction of astronomers h
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Percentage of AAS Membership by Fie
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0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 PL SO IM AG SF IN S
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FIGURE 4‐12 Number (top panel) an
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Professional training needs to acco
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assistant and associate professor p
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fluctuating level of funding for as
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THEORY Emerging Trends in Theoretic
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Central to the Galaxies across Cosm
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TABLE 5‐2 Support for astrophysic
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would normally be for a five-year p
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FIGURE 5‐7 Highly cited HST publi
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y optical and radio astronomers are
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FIGURE 5‐8 Number of PhDs per yea
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ated by the Program Prioritization
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nulling interferometry. The appropr
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FIGURE 5‐9 The richness of the su
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RECOMMENDATION: NASA and NSF suppor
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FIGURE 6‐1. All sky map as observ
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FIGURE 6‐3 NASA mission cost over
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FIGURE 6‐5 Gemini North with Sout
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TOWARD FUTURE PROJECTS, MISSIONS, A
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3. Investment in new and upgraded i
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etween several competing elements i
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7 Realizing the Opportunities The p
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FIGURE 7.1 Survey time line showing
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SCIENCE OBJECTIVES FOR THE DECADE T
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Box 7.1 Implementing a Cosmic Dawn
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JWST, with its superb mid-infrared
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optical imaging of brighter galaxie
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Box 7.3 Implementing the Physics of
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FIGURE 7.2 Multiwavelength images o
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Recommendations for New Space Activ
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FIGURE 7.4 Science accomplishments
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significance of mergers in the buil
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independent advice committee review
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committee review. It could range be
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Laboratory Astrophysics As describe
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Recommendations for New Ground-Base
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Program for instrumentation and fac
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excel at high spectral and spatial
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The committee reviewed a technical
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FIGURE 7.10 ACTA would be, like the
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Advanced Technologies and Instrumen
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LISA as soon as possible subject to
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FIGURE 7.14 DOE recommended program
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A Summary of Science Frontiers Pane
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PLANETARY SYSTEMS AND STAR FORMATIO
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A preliminary recommended program w
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certified as independent work perfo
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penalty based on an assessment of s
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The results show excellent correlat
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$12 MILLION TO $40 MILLION RANGE CM
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decadal research strategy with reco
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CFP CHIPSat CIP CGRO CMB CMU CoBRA
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NRC NSB NSF NSF-AGS NSF-ARC NSF-AST
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