Here's a draft of the summary that will be in next week's Orbital Index: Last Thursday, at the request of NASA, the NSF, and other science agencies, NASEM rele

Here's a draft of the summary that will be in next week's Orbital Index: Last Thursday, at the request of NASA, the NSF, and other science agencies, NASEM released their astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey for the 2020s. Following a decade of exoplanet discovery, the report’s top recommendation was for development of a space telescope significantly larger than Hubble that could directly image habitable zone exoplanet atmospheres in both IR and optical wavelengths to search for biosignatures. This telescope, to launch in the early 2040s, would be neither HabEx or LUVOIR, two proposed next-generation telescopes, but something in between. They also recommend development of a very high resolution X-ray mission and a far-infrared mission. To enable these efforts, and avoid the delays and overruns of missions like the JWST, they recommend establishing a ‘Great Observatories Mission and Technology Maturation Program’ as a new approach for planning and implementing large missions. “The program would provide early investment in technology development for multiple mission concepts to lower the risks and costs of projects before they become too complex, large, and costly.” Decadal surveys have real impact: the 1980s decadal survey resulted in the Chandra X-ray Observatory (20 years later); the 90s survey resulted in the Spitzer Space Telescope; the 2000s resulted in the James Webb Space Telescope (finally launching next month!); and, the 2010s pushed forward WFIRST & LSST, both under active development. Other recommendations from last week’s release include the development of a regulatory framework to control the impacts of satellite constellations on astronomy; changes to funding to increase research and promote diversity; continued development of ground-based gravitational wave observatories; a focus on multi-messenger astrophysics; program management changes with NSF innovation and facility funding; and, continued investment in large ground-based telescopes, such as the U.S. Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), a next generation ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment, the Next Generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) radio telescope, and the IceCube-Generation 2 neutrino observatory.