posted 11-04-2021 11:06 AM               

The report recommends that NASA create a new Great Observatories Mission and Technology Maturation Program, which would formulate several major overlapping space missions in the upcoming decades, changing the way major projects are planned and developed. The program would provide early investment in the development of multiple mission concepts to lower the risks and costs of projects before they become too complex, large, and costly.

The first mission to enter this program should be an infrared/optical/ultraviolet (IR/O/UV) telescope — significantly larger than the Hubble Space Telescope — that can observe planets 10 billion times fainter than their star, and provide spectroscopic data on exoplanets, among other capabilities. The report says this large strategic mission is of an ambitious scale that only NASA can undertake and for which the U.S. is uniquely situated to lead. At an estimated cost of $11 billion, implementation of this IR/O/UV telescope could begin by the end of the decade, after the mission and technologies are matured, and a review considers it ready for implementation. If successful, this would lead to a launch in the first half of the 2040 decade.

Five years after beginning this first mission, the report recommends NASA start preliminary studies of both a Far-IR strategic mission and a high-resolution X-ray large strategic mission with target costs of $3 billion to $5 billion.

The survey committee has significant concerns about SOFIA, given its high cost and modest scientific productivity. The NASA portion of SOFIA’s operating budget is out of balance with its scientific output, which is a fraction of that of comparable cost missions (e.g., HST, Chandra) and often less than those of Explorer missions.

The survey committee finds no evidence that SOFIA could transition to a significantly more productive future and notes the minimal mention of SOFIA science by the science panels. The committee found no path by which SOFIA can significantly increase its scientific output to a degree that is commensurate with its cost and endorses NASA’s current plan to discontinue operations in 2023.