6
Technology Foundations and Small- and Medium-Scale Sustaining Programs
In this chapter, the focus shifts from current facilities to the technology development that keeps them on the cutting edge and the small and medium projects that complement them. These elements provide rapid response to new opportunities and discoveries, and offer platforms for building a strong and diverse community of innovative instrumentalists and technologists who will drive future progress. The agencies’ historical willingness to support a significant range of program scales is a proven strength of the U.S. astrophysics portfolio, and is an even more pressing need today, as made clear by the large costs and long development time scales for the Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) observatories and flagship missions submitted for consideration to Astro2020. This chapter draws from the Enabling Foundation for Research (EFR) panel report (see Appendix H), as well as from the reports of the panels on Electromagnetic Observations from Space 1 (EOS-1), Electromagnetic Observations from Space 2 (EOS-2), Optical and Infrared Observations from the Ground (OIR), Particle Astrophysics and Gravitation (PAG), and Radio, Millimeter, and Submillimeter Observations from the Ground (RMS) (see Appendixes I through M), all of which emphasize the need for sustaining a broad range of activities for advancing Astro2020 science goals.
Small- and mid-scale programs advance broad-reaching astrophysics scientific goals and fuel new discovery. National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) suborbital and Explorer missions, and National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Mid-Scale Innovations Program (MSIP) projects can be conceived, implemented, and deployed on a few-years time scale, in exchange for focusing on a narrower set of capabilities or science objectives. In addition to advancing a broad range of science simultaneously and synergistically, small- and mid-scale projects are essential to the agility of the science program. Astrophysics is fundamentally a discovery-driven science, and examples of major advances enabled by the ability to respond quickly to new discoveries abound. The Swift Medium Class Explorer (MIDEX), with its agile pointing and broad wavelength coverage, was conceived, developed, and launched within 6 years of the discovery of the X-ray and optical afterglows of gamma-ray bursts. Another example is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Explorer mission, which was able to quickly capitalize and expand on the transit detection breakthroughs of Kepler to execute an all-sky census to identify potential James Webb Space Telescope targets. On the ground, the Deep Synoptic Array (DSA)-110 MSIP radio array project was selected and developed and is projected to begin observing in the early 2020s, rapidly responding to the
progress in the field of fast radio bursts. None of these capabilities could have been met with a current or planned larger project, and astronomy’s rapid response to these new scientific opportunities has been a proven success that the United States aims to replicate in the coming decade.
The range of institutions, both public and private, that engage in technology development, small missions and experiments, and mid-scale activities such as MSIP and Explorers is another major strength of the U.S. program. Collaborations involve public and private university-based efforts, government laboratories supported by the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and NASA centers. Industrial partnerships are also important at these scales, usually for development of components requiring specialized fabrication approaches or processes. Government laboratories and NASA centers house state-of-the art, sustained capabilities for, for example, metrology, lithography, and microfabrication, essential for many technical building blocks. Universities also have special expertise and dedicated laboratory facilities and test beds that are often unique in the world. This combination has developed world-leading technology, and small- and medium-scale observatories that have had high scientific impact for astrophysics (Box 6.1).
Last, these partnerships and the balance and range of project scales have been essential in developing the careers of the instrument builders, technologists, and principal investigators (PIs) that are so important to the success of the astronomy and astrophysics enterprise. Being an effective PI of a large facility or flagship instrument, or a Small Explorer (SMEX) or MIDEX mission, requires a high degree of experience and training. These are often acquired through involvement with and/or leadership of smaller payloads or modest-sized ground-based instruments. The specialized training of technologists and instrument scientists is a progressive process, from the undergraduate level where students often first become engaged in the field, to graduate training in laboratories and on experiments, to early-career stages where individuals develop their own initiatives and become established researchers. The endeavors undertaken during these career stages often progress with project size.
6.1 THE TECHNOLOGY FOUNDATIONS
New technologies for astronomical instrumentation are crucial building blocks without which observational capabilities would stagnate. It is hard to imagine modern astronomy without large-format charge-coupled devices (CCDs), or without the bolometers and calorimeters that are at the heart of so many observatories and experiments, from time-domain facilities to forefront cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization measurements. Early and significant investments in technology directed at flagship missions and large NSF facilities provide a refined understanding of costs and risks prior to construction, and for space missions this reduces the likelihood and magnitude of cost and schedule overruns during development.1 NSF’s Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation (ATI) and NASA’s Astrophysics Research and Analysis (APRA) and Strategic Astrophysics Technology (SAT) programs support several essential functions: supporting the modifications required to apply technologies to the exacting needs of astronomers; demonstrating that they function in the relevant environment and as part of a system; and inventing entirely new approaches for novel astrophysical measurements.
6.1.1 NASA’s Competed Technology Development and Demonstration Programs
This section focuses on early-stage technology development, investments in technology required to advance NASA’s small- and medium-scale missions, and maturation of component technologies to a level
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1 J.C. Mankins, 2008, “The Critical Role of Advanced Technology Investments in Preventing Spaceflight Program Cost Overruns,” The Space Review, https://www.thespacereview.com/article/1262/1.
at which they are ready to be incorporated into flight missions of all cost scales. Chapter 7 addresses the crucial issue of technology maturation for defined, strategic missions. NASA supports two major technology programs for astrophysics—APRA and the more recently established SAT program—to support “blue-sky” and strategic, mission-oriented technology development, respectively.
6.1.1.1 APRA Technology Development
APRA’s success is grounded in its open, competed calls for early-stage technology development as well as maturation and demonstration of component technologies.2 The technologies developed through this program have advanced NASA’s entire range of mission scales—from suborbital payloads, to SmallSats, Explorers, and flagships over the full electromagnetic and multi-messenger spectrum, from submillimeters to gamma rays to cosmic rays. APRA is also the best opportunity in NASA Astrophysics for developing highly innovative but risky new technologies. APRA technology grants are also an important mechanism for early-career instrumentalists or technologists to establish themselves, and these grants fuel the university-based laboratory development efforts that train the next generation of innovators (see Box 6.1).
The APRA technology funding is, however, significantly constrained. In addition to general technology development, APRA funds a wide range of activities, from suborbital payload development and science to laboratory astrophysics. It is therefore difficult to determine the exact amount supporting new technology; the Enabling Foundation for Research panel report estimates that 40 percent of APRA funding, or ~$8 million a year, goes into the Detector Development and Supporting Technologies components of the program (see Section H.2.7.1). Of concern is the fact that a typical 3-year technology development grant in either of these two categories ranges from $200,000 to a maximum $400,000 a year, with only a few awards funded at the higher level. This funding is sufficient for student and postdoctoral support but not for equipment purchases necessary to start a new laboratory or research effort, or for involving commercial partners in fabrication of elements involving non-recurring engineering costs.
The limited APRA technology funding levels restrict its impact relative to the priorities of this survey in several important ways. First, levels are too small to address the need to advance broad technologies to acceptable levels (technical readiness level [TRL] 5–6) for incorporation in future Explorer, suborbital, and SmallSat missions. The APRA technology funding levels are also such that establishing a new laboratory effort is essentially impossible without significant supporting infrastructure provided by the host institution (i.e., leveraging an existing optics, electronics, or detector lab or using institutional start-up funds). This creates barriers to entry for young researchers or for researchers establishing new directions, and it limits the range of institutions that can effectively compete, reducing the overall diversity of participants. The Nancy Grace Roman Technology Fellowship program is intended to give early-career researchers the opportunity to develop skills to lead flight instrumentation projects by providing funding to establish a laboratory and research group. The program is excellent, and it has supported individuals who are now PIs on suborbital and satellite missions. However, the funding levels of $300,000 are small given that such efforts are typically multi-year, and require the purchase of significant equipment.
Recommendation: NASA should increase funding levels for the Detector Development and Supporting Technology components of the Astrophysics Research and Analysis Program. Priority should be placed on increasing grant sizes for larger efforts as well as increasing the overall funding in the technology elements of the program. The total increase needed to ensure a healthy selection rate and appropriate grant sizes is estimated to be about 50 percent above inflation.
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2 APRA also supports the development of suborbital payloads and laboratory astrophysics. Here, we are concerned with the subset of APRA supporting technology development.
6.1.1.2 The Strategic Astrophysics Technology Program
The SAT Program, initiated in response to a recommendation from New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics (Astro2010),3 competes and selects projects aimed at maturing component technologies relevant to strategic flagship missions to the point that they are demonstrated at a subsystem level and/or in a relevant environment (TRL 6). The first selections from the 2012 call responded to specific flagship technology development needs identified by Astro2010. Examples of programs funded from the 2018 call include demonstration of wavefront control for a future high-contrast exoplanet imaging mission such as the proposed Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx) or Large Ultraviolet Optical Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR), high-resolution far-IR receivers for a mission such as the proposed Origins Space Telescope, and adjustable high-resolution X-ray optics, at the heart of the proposed Lynx flagship. While directed at flagships, some of these technologies have potential application on Explorer-class missions. As a competed program open to the community, SAT draws from a large talent base at universities, NASA centers, and government laboratories.
The SAT program is an important element in addressing the maturation of component technologies at the intermediate level (TRL 3–5); however, it is insufficient to address the need to co-mature mission concepts and their associated technologies in a coherent way. Chapter 7 discusses this issue, and recommends establishing the Great Observatories Mission and Technology Maturation Program to address this gap. There will, however, still be the need to mature technologies for the probe-class missions, as well as for strategic missions prior to their funding through the Great Observatories Mission and Technology Maturation Program.
Recommendation: NASA should continue funding for the Strategic Astrophysics Technology Program, and should expand proposal calls to include intermediate-level technology maturation targeted in strategic areas identified for the competed probe-class missions.
6.1.2 NSF’s Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation Program
NSF’s ATI program is a critical component of the Division of Astronomical Sciences (AST) portfolio that supports the development of innovative, potentially transformative technologies (even at high technical risk) within the overarching AST science objectives. Although ATI is within the AST division, there is a natural overlap with broader programs such as Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) and Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program, and some awards are co-funded. Technologies and instruments supported under ATI span the range from radio through optical and have included Epoch of Reionization receivers, very-long-baseline interferometry, CMB experiments, microwave kinetic induction detectors (Figure 6.1 shows an example), CCDs, adaptive optics, large mirrors, laser frequency combs, integral field units, specialized software, and more. In addition to technological advances, many awards lead to significant advances in observational capabilities. ATI has supported projects that are small enough to be managed by a single investigator, yet large enough to have a substantial impact.4 Crucially, ATI funding is one of the few mechanisms through which an early-career instrumentalist can become established, and these projects provide essential training for students and postdocs.
ATI addresses a crucial stage in instrument development. Putting major facilities aside, a modern millimeter-wave, IR, or optical instrument built for an existing ground-based telescope costs anywhere between
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3 National Research Council, 2010, New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics, The National Academies Press, Washington, DC.
4 P. Kurczynski and S. Milojevic, 2020, “Enabling Discoveries: Thirty Years of Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation at the National Science Foundation,” https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.05899.
a few million dollars and roughly $30 million, and then up to $5 million more to characterize, calibrate, operate, and deliver usable data. Bringing one of these to fruition requires careful attention to cost, schedule, and management. While there is room for some innovation, the technological foundation for these projects needs to be fairly solid for success. An underdeveloped technology can lead to delays and cost overruns in a large project. This risk can be mitigated by advancing technology through the ATI program.
Past decadal surveys have recommended increased investment in developing basic technology. Despite this advice, however, NSF AST has instead significantly cut the budget for ATI over the past 10 years. Astro2010 recommended an increase in ATI funding, from $10 million a year (fiscal year 2010) to $15 million a year to accommodate general technology development, including the pressing need to develop advanced adaptive optics systems in the optical, as well as new radio instrumentation. Instead, since 2012 the ATI budget has steadily decreased until today, where for the past 3 years it has been funded at the $6 million a year level (FY 2020). This contraction has significantly restricted the size of awards so that they are no longer sufficient to develop an advanced technology without requiring researchers to seek and juggle support from multiple sources and to rely heavily on existing infrastructure. Such infrastructure may not be available to new researchers, especially those at institutions without established technology development efforts. Last, ATI funding is insufficient for developing small-scale instrumentation (less than a few million dollars), and so the NSF-wide MRI program is the only avenue available for this. However, MRI is highly over-subscribed, requires institutional matching, and has institutional limits on the number of proposals that can be submitted. These factors severely limit the opportunities available for astrophysics instrumentation.
Looking to the coming decade, the need to support advanced technologies is, if anything, greater than it was a decade ago. In Chapter 7, an expanded mid-scale program is recommended, the success of which will depend on novel technologies and approaches. The survey committee also recommends U.S. investment
in very large telescopes. These will transform science, but not without state-of-the-art instrumentation and adaptive optics (AO) systems that enable diffraction-limited observations, which require significant technology investment. Other areas ripe for investment include, but are by no means limited to, correlators and elements of radio cameras, far-infrared detectors and spectrometers, predictive control for AO, ultraprecise radial velocity techniques, and advanced fiber positioning systems for massively multiplexed spectrographs. To ensure that the future has a strong foundation in technology and instrumentation, ATI funding must be increased, a sentiment also supported by the report of the Panel on an Enabling Foundation for Research.
Recommendation: The National Science Foundation should restore the Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation Program to $14 million a year (fiscal year [FY] 2020)—the same level of support it had in 2010—and further increase it to a target level of $20 million a year (FY 2020) by 2028.
6.2 SMALL- AND MEDIUM-SCALE PROGRAMS
As described above, small- and medium-scale projects and missions are essential to sustaining scientific advances because of their speed and nimbleness in responding to new scientific opportunities, their ability to extend the wavelengths and techniques with which we observe the universe, their essential role in maturing new, transformative technologies, and their function as platforms for cultivating the next generation of instrumentalists and technologists who will build the facilities of the future. An analysis of specific small- and medium-scale instrumentation and mission programs at NASA and NSF is presented below.
6.2.1 NASA’s Small- and Medium-Sized Projects and Missions
Small- and medium-sized programs are absolutely essential for NASA. Not only are they key elements of a scientifically balanced portfolio, but they also address the fact that space missions are both more demanding and higher stakes than comparable ground-based projects. As such, NASA’s smaller programs that demonstrate technology and develop skilled future PIs are core to the long-term success of its entire astrophysics portfolio. This section describes NASA’s small and medium flight programs. These are all openly competed, with projects ranging in scale from a few million dollars to ~$300 million. All of these programs emphasize scientific return in the near and long term, provide opportunities for immediate science (on the time scale of a graduate student education), and build the foundation for future missions of all sizes.
6.2.1.1 The Suborbital Programs
NASA’s suborbital programs address a wide variety of science, develop and test essential technology for future missions, and train the next generation of instrumentalists and project leaders. The suborbital portfolio comprises two components: high-altitude ballooning for reaching altitudes of up to 40 km for many days at a time (Figure 6.2) and sounding rockets to reach beyond the stratosphere for flight durations measured in minutes. Unlike orbital missions, suborbital programs allow rapid revision and reuse of payloads, speeding the technology development cycle. Many of NASA’s largest visions have built upon the technology and expertise developed through these programs. Time and again, the programs have demonstrated their efficacy in producing leaders for space missions. As touched on elsewhere in this report, cultivating new instrumentalists is essential for maintaining and diversifying both future leadership in space astrophysics overall, as well as ensuring a technically trained scientific workforce.
6.2.1.1.1 The Balloon Program
The balloon program offers access to a near-space environment with a wide variety of options for duration and sky coverage. Its wide array of capabilities include single-day “conventional” flights and long duration balloon flights lasting up to 60 days in circumpolar flights around the Antarctic. After years of development, super-pressure balloons for ultra-long-duration balloon (ULDB) flights carrying payloads up to 2,000 pounds with nearly constant float altitudes for up to 100 days are coming to the fore, opening up new possibilities. The balloon program’s impact on innovation and science can be seen in its breadth of payload instrumentation: kilo-pixel IR and millimeter-wave cameras (see Figure 6.1), CMB polarimeters, stabilized platforms with sub-arcsecond pointing accuracy for wide-field UV-optical region imaging, gamma-ray detectors, and sub-atomic particle detectors. Multiple proposed satellites with CMB, IR, X-ray, and time-domain capabilities submitted to Astro2020 have roots in the balloon program, just as their predecessors did for existing and completed Explorers and flagships.
Pathways to improving the balloon program to take maximum advantage of these promising opportunities include (1) increasing the number of flights; (2) continuing to strive for higher ULDB float altitudes; (3) increasing the accessibility of the program to more PIs by reducing barriers to entry; and (4) exploring structural adjustments that can support new PIs. Possibilities for accomplishing (4) include “piggy-backing” instruments on existing payloads, providing common hardware, providing access to funded engineering and mentoring support, and combinations of these.
Although it is beyond the scope of this survey to perform an in-depth analysis of the program, it is clear from the Enabling Foundation panel report (see Section H.2.8.1) and the progress addressing Astro2010 recommendations that important challenges lie ahead for achieving the goals enumerated above, particularly for taking advantage of new ULDB opportunities. The first challenge relates to the available funding levels for balloon payloads, which have not kept up with the increased scope and complexity. Although Astro2010 recommended increasing the funding by $5 million a year to the research and analysis program
(p. 222 of that report, along with a $10 million a year increase for infrastructure), the budget has remained roughly constant over the decade at $25 million a year in awards typically supporting approximately 30 payloads in various stages of build, standby, deployment, and analysis. A second challenge relates to the ballooning infrastructure and management, which requires investment and possibly reorganization to find the right balance between increasing the launch rate and balloon technology development, while recognizing the inherent risks. Last, broadening and diversifying participation will require changes to the way NASA supports teams, particularly those with young investigators at institutions that are still developing strong, independently funded technical and engineering infrastructure.
Recommendation: NASA should undertake an external review of the balloon program to establish a framework for accomplishing the competing needs of achieving flight capabilities and launch rates that meet demands, ensuring adequate investment in payloads and lowering barriers to entry.
6.2.1.1.2 The Sounding Rocket Program
Sounding rockets complement balloons by providing quick access to near-space conditions. This is a unique capability for some investigations, especially in wavebands where the residual atmosphere at balloon altitudes is limiting, such as soft X-ray, UV, and some infrared bands. Rockets are also crucial for maturing technologies and formally qualifying them for spaceflight. Because the pointing platforms are provided by NASA to the investigator teams, the barrier for entry is lower than for the balloon program, where groups typically must develop both the payload and pointing platform. This makes sounding rockets attractive for developing new PIs, and diversifying instrument development teams. While there is limited proposal pressure from the community for increased flight rates and capabilities, the current sounding rocket program provides an important component of NASA’s astrophysics program.
Conclusion: The rocket program provides unique, irreplaceable opportunities for accessing space. It is important to maintain this capability.
6.2.1.2 NASA’s Explorers Program
NASA’s Explorers Program provides opportunities for competed, PI-led missions on a range of scales, from the SMEX and MIDEX missions with dedicated launches, to Missions of Opportunity (MOs), to the relatively new SmallSats. The stand-alone SMEX and MIDEX platforms, with PI-managed cost caps of $145 million (FY 2020) and $290 million (FY 2022), respectively, enable teams to propose highly capable but focused scientific missions. These are developed and launched on 5-year time scales, and respond to new discoveries while often providing multiwavelength capabilities distinct from those of NASA’s flagships. MOs allow small payloads to be deployed on a variety of platforms, including ULDBs and instruments attached to the International Space Station (ISS). Recently, SmallSats—which include volume-limited CubeSats and other small orbital experiments launched as secondary payloads—have been added. The Enabling Foundation panel report (see Section H.2.9) provides additional background, including recent selections.
From the small-scale MOs to MIDEXs, NASA’s Explorers Program has provided tremendous scientific return for the investment (Figure 6.3). Reflecting the program’s value, Astro2010 recommended increasing NASA’s investment in Explorers from $40 million to $100 million (FY 2010) annually in order to increase the rate of proposal opportunities and launches. NASA has largely achieved the recommended target, and the resulting selections in the last decade, ranging from the TESS exoplanet mission to the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) X-ray timing payload deployed on the ISS, have returned exceptional science during their prime mission phases, and have also served broad user communities in their extended missions.
Conclusion: NASA’s augmentation of the Explorers Program in response to Astro2010’s recommendation has resulted in an increased rate and a tremendous science output.
Recommendation: NASA should maintain Explorers Program launch rates at the level specified in New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics.
The addition of SmallSats to the Explorers Program supports the development and launch of larger (12U) CubeSats and similar-scale satellites.5 While not strictly suborbital, the SmallSat program has some common attributes to the balloon and sounding rocket programs. A SmallSat consists of both an instrument and a spacecraft bus that provides power, communications, and pointing. The spacecraft can be commercially procured, meaning that, like the sounding rocket program and unlike the balloon program, teams can benefit from commercially provided infrastructure, and can focus on the instrument and science, potentially lowering the barrier to entry to new PIs and teams. Managing a SmallSat program can be challenging, and support provided by NASA could further increase the range of institutions participating in the program. It remains to be seen whether SmallSats will, in the long run, prove to be an effective platform for a range of astrophysics investigations. As with all elements of the program, it will be important for NASA to periodically review the proposal pressure and viability of SmallSat Explorer selections with the
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5 CubeSats are spacecraft sized in units (U), each having a volume of about 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm. Common CubeSat sizes are 1U, 3U, 6U, and 12U.
aim of achieving broad goals that include science return, technology development and maturation, and broadening participation to advance diversity and inclusion.
The highly scientifically successful Explorers Program has challenges to overcome to address the lack of diversity in its scientific and technical teams. For the MIDEX and SMEX missions in particular, teams lack a healthy representation of career stage, gender, ethnicity, and institutional participation. Using the participation by women in mission leadership and science teams as one marker of diversity, one Astro2020 white paper finds that from 2008 to 2016, this participation was well below the representation of women in astronomy and astrophysics as a whole.6 This means that the Explorers program is failing to benefit from the entire available talent base, and the broadest range of the community is not fully engaged in the unique opportunities presented by the program.
Effective leadership as PI for a SMEX- or MIDEX-scale mission requires significant experience and training. A first step to achieving a more diverse leadership pool is to broaden participation in technical, instrument, and leadership teams as a whole. However, especially for technical teams at small institutions, this is challenging owing to structural barriers to entry. For instrumentalists and mission leaders (PIs, project scientists, and instrument leads), the complex, costly, and unique engineering and technical resources required to develop a mission proposal create significant barriers to entry. NASA, by design, does not compete the funding for mission concept or proposal development, leaving potential PIs to seek resources on their own. Teams with access to NASA or other specialized centers, and those with internal resources, benefit overwhelmingly from this structure. While it is important not to limit potential proposers so as to have the largest range of concepts to choose from, provision of resources for mission concept development by NASA through a simple proposal process would significantly lower the barrier to entry. It is also important that experienced PIs establish team roles that enable emerging leaders to gain experience. NASA’s new Pioneers program (see below) is a potential stepping stone in this process. NASA’s PI Launchpad Workshop held in 2019 is another welcome step in efforts to expand the range of future PIs. Additional suggestions are presented in Appendix H, the report of the Panel on an Enabling Foundation for Research, and NASA is also sponsoring a National Academies study on “Increasing Diversity and Inclusion in the Leadership of Competed Space Science Missions.”
Conclusion: The NASA-sponsored National Academies study “Increasing Diversity and Inclusion in the Leadership of Competed Space Science Missions”7 will provide important advice toward broadening participation, and by implementing this advice NASA will strengthen the Explorers Program’s overall success.
6.2.1.3 The Pioneers Program
NASA began the Pioneers Program in 2020 as a means of bridging the gap between stand-alone Explorer missions and suborbital platforms. This program has overlap with the balloon, rocket, and Explorer MO programs; however, it is distinct in providing up to $20 million of funding, greater than that available for traditional suborbital and SmallSat platforms. It is specifically designed to provide opportunities for early-to-mid-career researchers to lead space or suborbital science investigations for the first time. Although still in its early stages, Pioneers are an important exploration of a path for broadening the pool for tomor-
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6 J. Centrella, M. New, and M. Thompson, 2019, “Leadership and Participation in NASA’s Explorer-Class Missions,” APC white paper submitted to Astro2020: Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics, https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.10314.
7 Publication of the resulting study report preceded the writing of this report. See National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2022, Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions, The National Academies Press. Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.17226/26385.
row’s Explorer-class leaders while at the same time delivering important science. Three SmallSats and one balloon proposal, with goals ranging from measuring intergalactic UV emission to detecting ultra-high energy neutrinos, have been selected for further study from the inaugural announcement of opportunity. Encouraging the development of new leaders in space instrumentation and mission implementation is aligned with the Astro2020 objective to broaden participation in NASA’s Explorers Program.
6.2.2 NSF’s Mid-Scale Programs
NSF’s competed mid-scale programs provide many of the essential elements advanced by NASA’s suborbital and Explorers programs. NSF has two programs that support mid-scale projects, which for the purposes of this survey are defined to be activities in a cost range from ~$4 million to ~$100 million, occupying the cost range between ATI grants and Major Facilities. One of these two programs is MSIP, funded and managed by AST since 2014. The other is the agency-wide Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure (MSRI) program founded in 2018 as part of NSF’s 10 Big Ideas and managed by a cross-disciplinary team of NSF program directors. These multiple routes for funding mid-scale projects—MSIP and MSRI—have different funding streams: MSIP falls within the NSF AST budget, whereas MSRI is NSF-wide. While this increases the diversity of funding opportunities, the total amount of funding available for astronomy and astrophysics projects faces uncertainties owing to the added NSF-wide competition for the latter program.
The Astro2010 decadal survey recommended MSIP as its second highest priority for large programs on the ground. This competed program, based on NASA’s highly successful Explorers Program model, was intended by Astro2010 to enable projects of size between the MSRI program and less than typical for an MREFC project, or between ~$4 million and $135 million in the Astro2010 recommendation. Astro2010 also recommended that calls for MSIP projects be open, peer reviewed, and competed in two categories: conceptual design and detailed design and construction. The total funding level for the program as envisioned by Astro2010 was ~$40 million a year (FY 2010).
NSF implemented the recommended program, leading to exciting, high-impact projects with broad science reach and relevance to Astro2020 science. In its first three cycles, MSIP has competitively awarded a total of $114 million to 18 distinct projects spanning a diverse range of science and wavelength (Figure 6.4). These awards have supported new projects, such as the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA), designed to measure and characterize the universe from the cosmic dawn to the epoch of reionization, and the DSA that will pinpoint and study fast radio bursts.8 MSIP has also funded upgrades and new instrumentation on existing telescopes, such as the Keck Planet Finder precision radial velocity instrument, as well as community access to existing facilities such as the Large Millimeter Telescope and the Las Cumbres time-domain optical follow-up network. The program has therefore provided broad access across public-private partnerships, has included international collaborations, and has advanced both individual-investigator–initiated programs, large survey projects, and archival research.
However, MSIP has not approached the target total funding level set by Astro2010, nor has it supported activities over the full range of cost scales, with most programs being at the lower end. To date, the selected awards have provided between $2 million and $12 million per project, significantly below the ~$100 million level envisioned by Astro2010 for at least some larger facilities. The last biannual solicitation provided a total of ~$21 million in funding, well below the $40 million a year target.
The MSRI program funds a range of activities, including facilities, equipment, instrumentation, or computational hardware or software. Divided into two tiers (MSRI-1 and -2), the most recent MSRI-1 call
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8 National Science Foundation, “Award Search,” https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearchResult?ProgEleCode=1257&BooleanElement=Any&BooleanRef=Any&ActiveAwards=true&#results, accessed November 26, 2022.
in late 2020 funded design and construction in the $6 million to $20 million range, and MSRI-2 funded infrastructure (construction) projects in the $20 million to $100 million range, excluding operations and science. In astronomy and astrophysics, NSF has funded the design and development of CMB-S4, and design of the next-generation Event Horizon Telescope, both in the MSRI-1 category, and no MSRI-2 projects, with <~14 percent of the total agency-wide funding going to astrophysics projects. With the most recent solicitation, going forward this program will allow proposals across almost the entire mid-scale range envisioned by Astro2010, a very welcome development. However, the oversubscription rate is extremely high, and an uncertain fraction will support AST and astronomy-related projects in the NSF Division of Physics. It is also not clear what the criteria are for preliminary selections, which are made by a panel of NSF program officers.
The survey received a large number of white papers on Activities, Projects, and State of the Profession Considerations for mid-scale projects that were evaluated by the OIR, PAG, and RMS program panels. Most of these were at the upper end ($50 million to $100 million) of the mid-scale range. While the survey did not request Technical Risk and Cost Evaluation evaluations of any mid-scale concepts, the program panel studies were sufficient to determine that there is no shortage of compelling projects that could be accomplished with mid-scale funding. All three of the program panels that considered projects, as well as the Enabling Foundation panel that considered the program as a whole, strongly endorsed mid-scale projects, providing multiple superb examples of past accomplishments and compelling new mid-scale ideas. The panels all emphasize their high science value (see Section H.2.10), cost effectiveness, and ability to enable agile approaches to addressing new science opportunities through the decade.
Conclusion: Mid-scale programs across the entire range of scales (~$4 million to $100 million) are vital to the enabling foundation of astronomy research.
As evidenced by the number of compelling community white papers, and given the assessments of the PAG, OIR, RMS, and EFR panels, the survey committee recommends in Chapter 7 expanding the midscale programs, including adding elements that ensure their responsiveness to decadal survey priorities.
