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has been generally beneficial to science historically, collaboration now seems imperative in order to
realize next generation facilities.
Figure 3-2 shows the effective ownership share in terms of the number of square meters of
primary mirror of the world’s largest telescopes and illustrates how the share has evolved over the last
two decades. Four categories of owners are shown: U.S. federal (red), U.S. private (blue), Europe
(purple), and other (green). The large decrease in the federal share during the era of 8m-class telescopes,
from 1990 to today, is noteworthy. When one takes into consideration factors such as number of smaller
telescopes the comparison becomes less stark, but by any measure the role of the U.S. public sector in this
arena has been contracting steadily.
The corresponding breakdown in U.S. federal (NSF) funding is divided between support for
public OIR observatories (NOAO and Gemini) at 81%, that for privately held telescopes through
instrumentation programs (TSIP) at 14%, and design and planning for GSMT, LSST, and other future
facilities at 5%. ATI and MRI funds allocated to OIR projects are not included in the calculation and are
distributed across the pie, albeit unequally, but do not affect the main conclusion. Private observatories
receive a small slice of the Federal funding even though they comprise the majority of telescope aperture.
Ground-Based Radio, Millimeter, and Submillimeter Astronomy
Radio astronomy was a young and unestablished field when The National Radio Astronomy
Observatory (NRAO) was founded in 1956. Unlike the situation in U.S. OIR astronomy, U.S. Radio,
Millimeter, and Submillimeter (RMS) astronomy has been primarily federally funded since its inception.
However, just as in OIR astronomy, the increasing cost of constructing large RMS telescopes and,
especially, the long-term cost of operating them, is now leading to growth of the idea of public-private
partnerships.
Although the concept of an RMS system is not widespread, there are limited examples of publicprivate
partnerships in radio astronomy (see Table 3-2). NSF partners with universities through the
University Radio Observatory (URO) program to operate, instrument, and provide public access to unique
radio observatories, currently the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO), the Combined Array for
Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA), and a small amount for the Allen Telescope Array
(ATA). The URO program is responsible for training at the student and postdoctoral level many of
today’s prominent RMS astronomers as well as the highly skilled technical staff who are needed to build
and operate the state of the art receivers and instruments.
NRAO is operated via a cooperative agreement between the NSF and a not-for-profit research
management corporation, AUI 7 . Its facilities can lay legitimate claim to international leadership in their
capabilities, at least for now. The complementary scientific capabilities provided by the national
observatory (now including ALMA), the smaller university-operated facilities, and more targeted
investments in experiments (e.g. CMB and EoR), and technology development should allow the U.S. to
maintain its position of international leadership in radio astronomy for at least another decade. However,
significant investments in next-generation facilities by Europe, China, Australia, and South Africa
(~$100M each) are beginning to challenge this leadership.
Currently, the balance of NSF/AST support for RMS activities is approximately 60-65 percent to
NRAO+ALMA telescope operations, 15-20 percent to university-operated radio observatories, 5-10
percent to experiments, and 10 percent to technology and future facilities development. The fraction
allocated to NRAO+ALMA will increase when ALMA becomes fully operational in 2014.
7 Associated Universities, Incorporated
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