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are increasingly relevant. The European scientific community has initiated international planning on a pan-European scale over the past 5 years, with its Astronet, 1 Aspera, and the European Space Agency (ESA) Cosmic Vision exercises. These and similar plans from other communities are loosely modeled after the NRC decadal survey process, but up to now do not interact with the planning in the United States or elsewhere to any substantive degree. Recognizing the potential value of international coordination and planning, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Science Forum and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) have sponsored workshops and other activities for the planning of future large facilities. The NRC’s Board on International Scientific Organizations also recently held a workshop 2 to bring scientists together with program managers and ministers from around the world to discuss plans for the future. Although one might well envisage a time later in this century when the exercise embodied in this Astro2010 activity is carried out by an internationally-organized committee, under the sponsorship of all member agencies, it is far too soon to recommend such a radical transition in planning. So long as the major share of astronomy research in the U.S. is underwritten by U.S. government agencies it is clear that the research agenda and project recommendations ought to be determined at the national level. However, as more major projects—including nearly all of the very large-scale astronomy and astrophysics projects—are conceived and carried out by international partnerships, an international forum for planning the future of astronomy will become increasingly valuable. In order that such a forum be effective, it will be necessary that it have the full support and participation of senior administrators within the agencies. From even modest beginnings a foundation could be laid for more substantive cooperation and joint planning in the future as well as a context provided for inter-agency negotiations to take place. RECOMMENDATION: Approximately every 5 years the international science community should come together in a forum to share scientific directions and strategic plans, and to look for opportunities for further collaboration and cooperation, especially on large projects. PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS In addition to encouraging opportunities for international collaboration and partnership, the Astro2010 Committee also found opportunities within the U.S. for leveraging federal investments through partnering with privately funded research efforts in astronomy and astrophysics. Ground-based Optical and Infrared Astronomy Most astronomical research in OIR astronomy was supported privately in the U.S. until 1958, when Kitt Peak National Observatory and AURA 3 were founded to provide public access to state-of-theart OIR facilities. In subsequent years, competition between the private and public sectors dominated cooperation. However, the increasing cost of constructing large telescopes and, especially, the long-term cost of operating them, coupled with the desire of astronomers not affiliated with the institutions operating private telescopes to have access to those facilities, eventually led to a growth of public-private partnerships in the United States. 1 For more information on the Astronet survey and its reports see http://www.astronet-eu.org/. 2 Beyond the Decade: The Future of International Astronomy http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/biso/ IAU/PGA_053106. 3 Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy PREPUBLICATION COPY—SUBJECT TO FURTHER EDITORIAL CORRECTION 3-6
Today it is common to refer to the “OIR System,” a concept envisioned by the last decadal survey of astronomy and astrophysics (AANM) 4 , as the union of public and private OIR ground-based facilities that provide open telescope access to the U.S. astronomical community. Based on the NSF Senior Review, NOAO formed two committees to focus on the OIR System to ensure access to a balance over all apertures for the astronomical community. Priorities and recommendations for large telescopes were the purview of the Access to Large Telescopes for Astronomical Instruction and Research (ALTAIR) committee. The Renewing Small Telescopes for Astronomical Research (ReSTAR) achieves a similar goal with respect to smaller telescopes. The reports from ReSTAR and ALTAIR 5 provide a roadmap for producing upgraded instrumentation that enables U.S. observatories to maintain international competitiveness, they leverage the considerable private investment in these facilities, and they provide open-access observing time to the U.S. OIR community. Other important system activities include the enabling of OIR technology development, adaptive optics and interferometry, access to data archives for ground-based OIR telescopes, and training of future astronomers. The National Optical Astronomical Observatories (NOAO) and the international Gemini Observatory are operated via a cooperative agreement between the NSF and a research management corporation, AURA. As summarized in Table 3-1, there are numerous ongoing partnerships for the existing U.S. ground-based OIR telescopes larger than 3 meters, including the majority of the largest (6.5–10 meter) aperture OIR telescopes available to the U.S. community. The nature of these partnerships varies greatly, some consisting of universities partnering with the NSF, or NASA, some between universities and foreign federal agencies, and others between private and state universities 6 . The combination of publicly and privately funded facilities is a feature particular to the U.S. system internationally. Over this same 50 year, period Europe has taken a different path. With the founding of European Southern Observatory (ESO) and its La Silla Observatory, Europe achieved near parity with the U.S. public observatories in the 1980’s. The few other (non-ESO) OIR facilities in Europe still tend to be nationally funded and there has been a gradual de-emphasis on institutionally operated observatories. Overall, the European model has evolved toward collective public investment in shared major facilities, major investments in new instruments and data systems, and high levels of user support. In the 1990’s Europe achieved full parity with the combined pubic-private U.S. OIR system, through the construction of the Paranal Observatory and its four 8-meter VLT telescopes. In some areas, such as high-resolution stellar spectroscopy, integral field spectroscopy, and data archiving, ESO has now established clear international leadership; the U.S. retains a lead in infrared detectors and high contrast imaging. Although the U.S. model is different from that in Europe and elsewhere, it offers some important advantages. Private institutions have attracted large sums of private capital and philanthropy for telescope projects and thereby offered strong leveraging of available public funding, which has gone to support instrumentation in exchange for public access. It also has allowed scientists to carry out larger, bolder, and more risky investigations than those typically approved by national or international peer review panels for heavily oversubscribed public telescopes. The U.S. privately-operated observatories have an operations model that is leaner than the Gemini Observatory and much leaner than ESO’s VLT, partially due to the provision of fewer user services. But access is restricted to the partner institutions, which may or may not include the federal government. The federally funded, publicly-operated national observatories (NOAO and Gemini) provide merit-based access to OIR telescopes for the entire U.S. community and the sole access to large OIR telescopes for nearly half of U.S. astronomers, including students. Among the largest apertures, Gemini provides 57 percent of the public access nights, Keck 25 4 National Research Council, Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium, National Academies Press. (2001) Available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.phprecord_id=9839 5 ReSTAR report, available at www.noao.edu/system/restar/files/ReSTAR_final_14jan08.pdf. Accessed May 2010. ALTAIR report, available at http://www.lsstmail.org/system/altair/. Accessed August 2010. 6 The state university funding for astronomy is estimated to be 80-90% public money and 10-20% privately raised within the public university. PREPUBLICATION COPY—SUBJECT TO FURTHER EDITORIAL CORRECTION 3-7
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THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS 500 Fi
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COMMITTEE FOR A DECADAL SURVEY OF A
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Panel on Stars and Stellar Evolutio
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DOUGLAS FINKBEINER, Harvard Univers
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SPACE STUDIES BOARD CHARLES F. KENN
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activities 2 that have emerged from
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In addition to the 27 panel meeting
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Acknowledgment of Reviewers This re
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The Accelerating Universe 2-26 The
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APPENDIXES A Summary of Science Fro
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light up the universe, marking the
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RECOMMENDED PROGRAM Maintaining a b
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TABLE ES.4 Space: Recommended Activ
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Cosmic Dawn: Searching for the Firs
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this imprint would both probe funda
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important outcome will be to open u
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Page 52 and 53: BOX 2-1 Other Worlds Around Other S
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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
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Page 80 and 81: Studying the properties of neutron
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Page 90 and 91: TABLE 3-1 Currently Operating OIR F
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Page 105 and 106: FIGURE 4‐5 President Obama takes
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Page 109 and 110: teaching the scientific method. The
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Page 126 and 127: THEORY Emerging Trends in Theoretic
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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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