Sky & Telescope - March 2022 - 8

NEWS NOTES
ASTRONOMY & SOCIETY
Astronomers Announce
Priorities for Next
Decade and Beyond
WHEN THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF
SCIENCE released the Decadal Survey
on Astronomy and Astrophysics, it
unveiled long-awaited marching orders
for the next decade and beyond.
The 614-page report, titled " Pathways
to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics
for the 2020s " (Astro2020 for
short), relied on advice from 867 white
papers, several public informationgathering
sessions, and 13 expert panels
to form its recommendations. (Due to a
COVID-related delay, these recommendations
start in 2022.)
Rather than simply prioritizing
missions for development, as previous
surveys have done, Astro2020 advocates
the creation of a " Great Observatories
Mission and Technology Maturation
Program. " This program would guide
technological advancement before committing
to specific mission concepts,
avoiding delays like the ones the James
Webb Space Telescope experienced.
The first mission concept to enter
the maturation program will be a
space telescope with a mirror at least
6 meters (20 feet) wide. This choice
compromises between two mission
concept proposals that went into the
decadal survey: the at-most 4-meter
The Astro2020 report recommended this
timeline for medium and large programs and
projects.
Great Observatories Mission and Technology Maturation Program
Gravitational-wave detector technology development
Midscale competed and strategic projects
Time domain/multi-messenger program
Cosmic Microwave Background Stage 4
Possible X-ray probe
Possible far-IR probe
U.S. Extremely Large Telescope(s)
Next-generation Very Large Array
IceCube-Gen2
IR/O/UV flagship
2022
2030
Year
SOLAR SYSTEM
NASA's DART Launches
for Asteroid Collision
A SPACECRAFT BUILT during pandemic
hardships has successfully
departed Earth on a one-way trip to
an asteroid. NASA's Double Asteroid
Redirection Test (DART) launched early
on November 24th and will crash headon
into Dimorphos, the moonlet of
near-Earth asteroid 65803 Didymos, in
September or October 2022.
8 MARCH 2022 * SKY & TELESCOPE
If DART and Dimorphos were billiard
balls of infinite strength and elasticity,
the outcome of this impact would be
easy to predict: The spacecraft would
bounce off almost as fast as it hit, and
the moon would slow by a tiny amount.
But Didymos and Dimorphos are
almost certainly loosely agglomerated
piles of gravel with a lot of empty space.
The lack of cohesion among particles
might allow the swift-flying spacecraft
to penetrate deeply into the surface,
compressing it instead of bouncing off,
2040
2050
Habitable Exoplanet Survey (HabEx)
and the Large Ultraviolet Optical
Infrared (LUVOIR) Surveyor, which
was proposed in 8-meter and 15-meter
configurations. This flagship mission
caps out at $11 billion through the first
five years of operation, with launch in
the early 2040s.
Next on the wish list are X-ray and
far-infrared observatories. These missions
will enter the maturation program
in the 2030s and will be funded at the
$3-5 billion level.
" This is a visionary road map for the
future of discovery, " says Grant Tremblay
(Center for Astrophysics, Harvard
& Smithsonian), a member of the Lynx
X-ray Observatory team. " The committee
has shown an achievable and
maximally ambitious path toward a new
constellation of Great Observatories. "
Astro2020 also gave high priority
to the development of at least one
Extremely Large Telescope, the Cosmic
Microwave Background Stage 4 Observatory,
and the next-generation Very
Large Array radio telescope, as well as
continued funding for gravitationalwave
and neutrino astronomy.
This survey focused not only on
facilities but also on people. The report
notes " abysmal " racial diversity among
astronomy faculty that has remained
largely unchanged since the 1980s, and
calls for investment in workforce diversity
as well as guarantees that policies
are in place to deal with harassment,
discrimination, and misconduct.
¢DAVID DICKINSON
Read more at https://is.gd/Astro2020.
reducing the collision's effectiveness.
On the other hand, the energy DART
imparts will mobilize Dimorphos particles,
launching them off of the superlow-gravity
asteroid moon. Each fragment
will carry some of Dimorphos's
momentum with it. Scientists predict
the slowing effect of the flying ejecta
will rival that of the head-on impact.
An Italian-built CubeSat named
LICIACube will separate from the carrier
craft before the impact to watch the
high-speed crash from a safe distance,
S&T ILLUSTRATION, SOURCE: NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES,
ENGINEERING & MEDICINE
https://www.is.gd/Astro2020
Sky & Telescope - March 2022

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