Telescopes on the moon

Image Credit: NASA

We're going back to the moon. It may be 15 or 20 years until we get there, but NASA is headed that direction. Many people, including a lot of astronomers, are opposed to this new lunar exploration. It will be very expensive, and we aren't sure what the point of the exploration is.

A colleague of mine once argued that we astronomers should be pushing NASA to build a telescope on the moon once we return. His idea, a liquid-mirror telescope, is pictured above. Such a telescope would be quite expensive, and the science it could do may be able to be done more cheaply with orbiting telescopes. But the point was that NASA is much more likely to spend a lot of money on the moon, not on new space telescopes, and if astronomers want a piece of that money, the time to start lobbying is now. Otherwise, we could find ourselves out in the cold once lunar exploration ramps up.

It's sort of like a parent shopping at a high-end luxury store asking their thrifty teenager, "Hey, should we buy you this 2nd-generation iPhone for $500?" The teenager responds, "But we can go to the Apple Store and buy the new iPhone 3G, which is more functional and less then half the price!" To which the parent responds, "You're getting this phone or you're getting nothing." What should the kid do? I think most of us would be tempted to take the phone.

Today, Space.com posted an article on a new design for a lunar telescope that has been proposed. This telescope could be built from materials on the moon. I have no doubt that the cost would be very high and the design technologically challenging to build (as would be the liquid-mirror telescope my colleague proposed). I know very little about the new proposal, such as what wavelengths of light it would be best suited for, or what instruments would go on it, or what scientific question(s) it would address. And, no doubt, NASA would make sure it is a very nice telescope, in terms of these capabilities.

But I wonder if we astronomers need to start thinking much harder about this. Do we want to push for a telescope on the moon? If there is a trade-off between a lunar telescope and a more functional, less-expensive space-based telescope, then let's by all means choose the latter. But I do think it is likely that we might be given the choice of a big lunar telescope, or no big telescope at all. And if we wait 15 years to make up our minds, it will be too late. Who knows what the astronauts will be doing on the moon science-wise, but it certainly won't be astronomy. And we'll have missed out.

There is good astronomy that can be done on the moon. One of the most convincing ideas I've heard is to put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon; the moon will block out radio signals from Earth, allowing us to study signals from space that are currently swamped by our FM radios, our iPhones, our satellite TV, and most every other modern bit of wireless communication. Some types of astronomy, like optical astronomy and, perhaps, infrared astronomy, are better done in orbit so that we don't have to worry about astronaut dust and other activity upsetting the instruments. But both of these fields would not suffer from a lunar telescope.

Astronomers are beginning to assemble our "decadal survey," a 10-year look into the future needs and desires of astronomy. This survey is cited in our funding requests to Congress and NASA. Maybe this time around we should debate the various possibilities of lunar telescopes. If we wait until 2020 to ask, it may be too late.

Tough times for astronomy?

Image Credit: piperreport.com

All week, I've been talking about new astronomy results on ever-increasing size scales. But, today, it is time to snap back to reality for, what I think, was the true news for astronomers last week.

As I blogged last week from the American Astronomical Society Meeting, the astronomy budget picture is bleak. NASA expects the astronomy budget to be severely crunched, due in part to small budget increases, and in part to budget line item directives that are requiring NASA to spend a lot of astronomy's money on one specific mission that had been delayed due to the budget crisis. The mandate from Congress on the science mission in question (which shall remain nameless, is deserving science, but is very expensive) will require cuts in many other areas of NASA astronomy, probably delaying several future missions and reducing money available as research grants.

Our big pot of research money, the National Science Foundation, is also expecting fairly flat budgets for the forseeable future; our planned astronomy investments require increasing budgets. Some very painful and unpopular cuts will almost certainly have to be made.

But we are better off than our friends in Great Britain. Due to budget concerns and some politics that I don't pretend to fully understand, British astronomers have been told to expect a 25% budget cut in the coming few years, as well as a withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the Gemini Telescope project (which will increase budget pressures on the NSF here in the U.S., too). This will be a tremendously difficult budget crunch for our British friends -- a 25% cut is extraordinarily painful for any group or business, whether publically funded or a privately owned. And the budget numbers fell from the sky with little warning.

We astronomers have been more successful than many government groups at getting funding increases in a time of tight non-defense budgets, but it looks like budget realities are catching up to us around the globe. The U.S. astronomy community is begining to prepare a report on the next decade of astronomy research in the United States (we've done this every ten years for several decades now, and it helps to guide Congress, NASA and the NSF in funding decisions). This time it looks like we will have to be much more grounded in realities, as we will have to consider tight budgets for the first time in years.