US Astronomers Face Hard Decisions

COMMENT HISTORY OF MEDICINE Galen’s CONSERVATION Songbirds MEDICAL RESEARCH Japanese trial OBITUARY David Pines, modern approach to ageing threatened by trapping of stem-cell therapy needs physicist who described how in ancient Greece p.430 in Spain p.431 tightening up p.431 electrons interact p.432 GIANT MAGELLAN TELESCOPE/GMTO CORPORATION TELESCOPE/GMTO GIANT MAGELLAN Blueprint of the Giant Magellan Telescope, a 25-metre-mirror telescope being built in Chile. It is run by an international consortium that includes US universities. US astronomers face hard decisions Building billion-dollar facilities in the 2020s and beyond will be impossible with the current model for funding and collaboration, warn Matt Mountain and Adam Cohen. very ten years, US astronomers set at the top will be built over the next decades. other stars2. Cosmologists are quantifying research priorities for the following The two-year process is widely viewed mysterious forces of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark decade. The latest cycle to pick pro- as a gold standard for building consen- energy’3. Completely new windows have Ejects for the 2020s has just started. In July, the sus — many other fields have adopted it, been opened onto the cosmos thanks to US National Academy of Sciences launched from Earth sciences to solid-state physics1. facilities such as the Atacama Large Milli- the seventh Astronomical Decadal Survey It carries weight with policymakers and meter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in (Astro2020) with a call for proposals for funders. But as astronomy firmly enters the Chile and the Laser Interferometer Gravi- future telescopes and space missions. Over ‘big science’ era, we think that the decades- tational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), in the the coming year, these will be collected, old system for funding federal astronomy states of Washington and Louisiana. assessed and discussed in open meetings. needs debating and updating. But large facilities that can explore these A ranked list of priority projects will be The science has never been so exciting. frontiers cost billions of dollars and take released in 2021. Funding permitting, those Earth-like planets have been found orbiting decades to design, build and operate. ©2018 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All ri ghts reserved. 23 AUGUST 2018 | VOL 560 | NATURE | 427 COMMENT ALMA was proposed in 1990 and became by investing in basic science. On the ground, where the capital and operational costs of operational in 2013. The James Webb Space this has led the NSF to establish major facili- ground-based facilities are funded from dif- Telescope (JWST) was approved in 2000 and ties such as the Very Large Array in New ferent accounts. Each time the NSF issues an will be launched in 2021. The Large Synoptic Mexico, the Gemini Telescopes in Hawaii and award to build a new telescope, the running Survey Telescope, recommended in 2010 Chile, and, most recently, ALMA. In space, costs must be found from the same limited and under construction in Chile, will begin NASA runs iconic pot of money that supports existing facilities to map the sky in 2023. The fruits of the 2020 “Financial observatories such as and research grants. Other NSF-funded fields, Decadal Survey won’t see light until the 2030s. pressure will the Hubble and Spitzer such as ecology, face the same challenge. The US community faces a daunting only worsen in space telescopes and This NSF funding structure was predi- task. Each generation of facilities is getting the 2020s.” the Chandra X-Ray cated on the idea that old telescopes would more expensive and harder to build. Opera- telescope. US astrono- be mothballed, and budgets would grow. tional costs are mounting. Meanwhile, the mers from any institution compete through Some facilities have been shut or divested. For research budgets of the US National Science a peer-review process for time on telescopes. example, the McMath Pierce Solar Telescope Foundation (NSF) and NASA have remained This mixed system has worked well for dec- in southern Arizona is due to become part of more or less flat since the 1990s (see ‘Astro- ades. But the next generation of ground-based the Kitt Peak Visitor Centre. The 44-year-old nomical costs’). Hard decisions have been telescopes has become so expensive that even Blanco Telescope in Chile, which just discov- made to close old but still-productive tel- consortia of universities and institutes are ered 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter, is now escopes, which has proved insufficient to pay struggling, despite hefty contributions from funded by the US Department of Energy and for new ones. And these pressures will only billionaires, state governments and interna- the NSF, together with funding agencies in the get worse as more big projects come online. tional partners. United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil and Germany, International competition is growing. US-led efforts to construct giant telescopes and contributions from institutions. The European Space Agency has picked its to match the European ELT plans have stalled. But this strategy has reached its limits. Big key projects as far ahead as 2044, including Both the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), a science facilities will always be much more an advanced X-ray space observatory. The 25-metre-mirror telescope under construc- expensive to run than older, simpler ones. European Southern Observatory has fully tion in Chile, and the Thirty Meter Telescope They are technically more complicated, use funded its Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) (TMT), which it is hoped will be built on more energy and need many highly trained in Chile. From the mid-2020s, its 39-metre- Mauna Kea in Hawaii, have been unable to personnel. For example, the NSF contrib- diameter mirror will collect more than ten find the billion dollars or more that each will utes about $40 million a year to ALMA’s times as much light as the largest optical need. In May, the two teams joined forces and annual running cost of $120 million; inter- telescopes today. China opened the world’s announced they would seek extra NSF fund- national partners cover the rest7. The Blanco biggest radio telescope in Guizhou province ing through the Decadal Survey5. In return, telescope, commissioned in 1974, requires in 2016, and plans to launch a competitor to they will enable broad US community access only $7 million a year to operate. the Hubble Space Telescope4. to the two telescopes, providing coverage of Financial pressure will only worsen in the Without a concerted effort, a US scientist both hemispheres of the night sky. 2020s if big facilities such as the GMT and the in the 2030s will be left without similarly TMT come online. We can no longer assume capable facilities. We will face an unaccep- BIG SCIENCE PERCEPTIONS that mothballing older facilities or taxing table dilemma: support existing grants and Space astronomy has always been federally grants will magically work 20 years from cede US leadership, or abandon funding for supported, and is expensive. The total bill now. There are not enough older telescopes key areas of research to support a few world- of the JWST has mounted to more than in the NSF’s portfolio to shut down to pay for leading facilities. US$9 billion, not helped by a series of delays. even part of the operational costs of these two As the presidents of organizations that The proposed Wide-Field Infrared Survey proposed facilities. build and operate major US publicly funded Telescope (WFIRST), which will examine The choices for the community and agen- telescopes on behalf of the NSF and NASA, exoplanets and dark energy should it launch cies are stark8. Facilities will need to be funded here we set out how entrenched assumptions in the late 2020s, would cost at least $3 billion. appropriately from the start, and operations and patterns of funding, development and Both projects have come under fire funds planned beyond the end dates of agen- collaboration must be reassessed. for their costs. In February, US President cies’ budgets. Without realism and a genuine Donald Trump proposed cancelling WFIRST, commitment to the next generations of scien- FEDERAL SUPPORT ESSENTIAL although Congress subsequently approved tists, the United States will give up its lead in The United States has historically built its funding for it. Incoming NASA administra- areas of astronomy where it has excelled for strength in astronomy on an eclectic mix of tor Jim Bridenstine has queried the need for decades. And this at a time when the scientific private and public observatories. Early tel- any large science missions. He said in May6: frontier of astronomy and astrophysics beck- escopes such as those at the Mount Wilson, “If we can do smaller missions with multiple ons more powerfully than at any other point Griffith and Lick observatories in Califor- satellites, then any one of them that runs over since Galileo lifted his telescope to the night nia were funded by foundations and run by doesn’t clobber the decadal [survey] not only sky more than 400 years ago. universities. Edwin Hubble discovered the for this decade but also the next decade”. expansion of the Universe at Mount Wilson in Yet if inflation is taken into account, the REDRAW THE LANDSCAPE the 1920s, for example. Until 2009, the United cost of the JWST is comparable with that Astronomers need to keep the following three States hosted the world’s largest telescopes: the of the Hubble telescope: $3 billion in 1990 points in mind while they discuss options for twin W. M. Keck telescopes in Hawaii each translates to around $9 billion today (see the 2020s and beyond. have mirrors 10 m across and were paid for ‘Astronomical costs’, middle right panel). largely by philanthropy. (That accolade is now Even in its peak funding year (2014), the Recognize that size matters.

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