Strictly Astronomy

NASA to Propose Flagship Astronomy Mission in 2015

NASA plans to wait until 2015 to lay out a proposal for its next big astrophysics mission, a senior agency official said July 30.

(An engineer inspects the JWST’s primary mirror segments at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Credit: Chris Gunn/NASA)

“A new flagship mission stands almost no chance of being funded until after work is finished on the budget-busting James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2018, said Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division. But the planning can begin before JWST begins its five-year mission to study the origins of the universe.”

”’Unless a miracle occurs, our next opportunity to start a new strategic mission will be after [JWST] launches,’ Hertz told members of the NASA Advisory Committee’s astrophysics subcommittee. ‘In 2017 we hope to start [work on] a new mission. We will put that plan in front of the community [in 2015] through the mid-decade review to find out whether they think we did a good job in following the decadal survey.’”

“Hertz said he will share more details about the options being considered for the 2015 mission proposal in a draft white paper to be released to the astrophysics community ahead of the American Astronomical Society’s Jan. 6, 2013, winter meeting in Long Beach, Calif.”

“Decadal Survey” is something one hears often in the circles of professional astronomy.  It’s essentially a road map of science goals and spending priorities the astronomy community draws up every ten years by some complicated process of ‘consensus’, intended to tell the U.S. federal government what it wants and how much it will cost.  It’s sort of a recognition that we can’t have everything we want all of the time —obviously — so here’s the science we think is most important and how much it will cost.  The survey process solicits inputs from astronomers across all branches of the field and through some bureaucratic black magic is distilled down into a thorough (but concise) report to the feds that helps guide policy decisions until the next survey a decade hence.

So, what might this major, new “flagship astronomy mission” consist of?  The suggestions from the survey are (courtesy of the Wikipedia):

• Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a proposed space-based telescope to be located at Lagrangian point L2 that will survey and catalogue exoplanets and may help settle questions of the nature of dark energy.
• New Worlds Technology Development Program to plan and lay the groundwork for future missions to study nearby Earth-like exoplanets

These are the two leading, recommended space missions contending for the post-JWST era… at least as of 2010, when the last Decadal Survey was released.  The smart money is on exoplanets these days, after other proposed missions like Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) were canceled in the 2000’s.  The resounding success of the Kepler mission in discovering new exoplanets has really raised the profile of these alien worlds in the scientific community, and the likelihood of finding an Earthlike, “holy grail” planet has significantly increased.

JWST, a large, infrared-optimized, space-based telescope will contribute to exoplanet studies, but it’s a general-purpose facility.  And its mission could last 20+ years, like Hubble.  Will the new “flagship” mission be a resurrected TPF/SIM, will it be WFIRST, or something we don’t even know about yet?  We’ll find out soon, at the next winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society.  -JCB