Astro 2020

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Astro 2020 hört sich an wie der Name für eine Konferenz oder Workshop über Astronomie, ist aber die Kurzbezeichnung für das alle zehn Jahre im Auftrag der amerikanischen National Academy of Sciences erstellte strategische Gutachten, in dem eine Liste von Projekten mit den allerhöchsten Prioritäten aufgestellt wird.

Sky & Telescope

Early next year, a high-powered group of astronomers spanning a range of disciplines will set the priorities for the next decade of astronomy. Selected by the National Academy of Sciences, this group will consider four flagship space telescope missions - any one of which could change the face of astronomy - as well as 10 smaller probe missions. The astronomers will then set down a vision of the future in a report called the decadal survey.

In 2016 NASA started funding detailed studies - including everything from costing models to work breakdown structures - for four “large mission” concepts:


> Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission

HabEx is a space telescope concept that would be optimized to search for and image Earth-size habitable exoplanets in the habitable zones of their stars, where liquid water can exist. HabEx would aim to understand how common terrestrial worlds beyond the Solar System may be and the range of their characteristics. It would be an optical, UV and infrared telescope that would also use spectrographs to study planetary atmospheres and eclipse starlight with either an internal coronograph or an external starshade.

> Large UV Optical Infrared Surveyor

LUVOIR is a concept for a general-purpose observatory, it has the key science goal of characterizing a wide range of exoplanets, including those that might be habitable. An additional goal is to enable a broad range of astrophysics, from the reionization epoch, through galaxy formation and evolution, to star and planet formation. Powerful imaging and spectroscopy observations of Solar System bodies would also be possible.

> Lynx X-ray Observatory

Lynx would be a follow-up of the Chandra X-ray observatory with a 50x higher sensitivity. The x-ray optic would be a large Wolter-type nested mirror configuration with a 3 m outer diameter and a total collecting area of 2.3 m².

> Origins Space Telescope

The Origins Space Telescope (OST) would perform astrometry and astrophysics in the mid- to far-infrared range by using a filled aperture telescope with an effective diameter 9.1 m (concept 1) or 5.9 m (concept 2). The telescope will require cryocooler systems to actively cool detectors at ∼50 mK and the telescope optics at ∼4 K. It will attain sensitivities 100–1000 times greater than any previous far-infrared telescope.

Diese vier Großprojekte stehen natürlich in Konkurrenz zueinander, es ist aber nicht einmal sicher, dass die Decadal Survey aus dieser Gruppe eins auswählen wird. Die ärgerlichen Verzögerungen und Kostenexplosionen vom James-Webb-Space-Telescope haben natürlich negative Auswirkungen auf das gesamte übrige Forschungsprogramm und könnten hier durchaus einen Sinneswandel auslösen:

After the bloated JWST mission, will the scientific community choose to greenlight another ambitious “Greater Observatory” - or press pause on flagship development?

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An artist's concept (not to scale) of the HabEx mission shows the telescope and the separate starshade that will fly with it. HabEx / NASA / Wikipedia
 
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