National Academy of Sciences maps astronomy research priorities

May 18, 2000
Web posted at: 11:19 p.m. EDT (0319 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The National Academy of Sciences will release a report Friday detailing how it recommends money be spent on astronomy research over the next decade.

First on the list of investment priorities is the Next Generation Space Telescope, which is scheduled to replace the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in 2008.

The NGST is predicted to be 100 times as sensitive as Hubble and will generate images 10 times as sharp. Unlike Hubble, which orbits the Earth just above the atmosphere, NGST would be deployed 1 million miles from Earth.

NGST is already far along in the design phase. The cost of the mission, including launch and 10 years of operations, has been estimated at $1 billion.

Also on the priority list is the ground-based Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope, which would study the evolution of galaxies.

Other projects on the list include the Constellation-X Observatory, which would study black holes, and expansion of the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico.

The report also endorses deploying an orbiting telescope called the Terrestrial Planet Finder. This satellite would search for planets outside our solar system, called extra-solar planets.

Astronomers have identified more than 40 extra-solar planets over the past five years. Though they are all at least the size of Saturn, they cannot be seen without a telescope.

The Terrestrial Planet Finder would be capable of detecting Earth-sized planets that might be orbiting nearby stars. Astronomers say these smaller planets would be promising places to look for extra-terrestrial life.

"New discoveries have the potential to shed light on many key challenges in astronomy, including identifying the total amount of matter in the universe as well as its age, evolution and ability to support life," said physicist Joseph H. Taylor of Princeton University, one of the report's authors.

In order to pay the billions of dollars these astronomy programs would cost, the National Academy of Sciences urged international cooperation and global partnerships.

Congress founded the National Academy of Sciences in 1863 to advise the federal government on scientific matters.

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