Decadal Survey
WISE saw the solar eclipse
July 14, 2010WMAP: It’s a Wrap!
August 20, 2010
Every 10 years the US astronomy community ranks proposed projects for the next decade. The 2010 report was released today, 13 Aug 2010, at 08:00 PDT. The top recommendations were the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), formerly known as the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).
I was on the Beyond Einstein Program Assessment Committee (BEPAC), and in 2006 we were told NASA had funding to start one mission before the decadal survey report came out, and we selected JDEM to be that mission. Unfortunately NASA only had funding to start ZERO missions before the end of the decade, but it is nice to see that the BEPAC’s judgment is still considered correct.
But this morning when I was looking for news about the report I found an article which said that:
“In space, the community’s top choice is the $1.6 billion Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer”!!!
Wow, WISE with 5 times its actual budget! This is no doubt an error that will be fixed, so I will insert a screen grab below:
Science Insider story on the 2010 Decadal Survey
3 Comments
Ned
This is the price of Fame. The editor of the note had to WISE in mind.
You with an less budget managed a great mission full of discoveries.
Another topic… WISE could discover some object KUIPER?
Best regards
Rafael
WISE is not very good at finding Kuiper belt objects since they are too cold for the WISE passbands. Another Jovian plant out in the Oort cloud could be seen because it would be self-luminous and bright at 4.6 microns.
Hi Dr. Wright-
Wow, $1.6 Billion, that’s an occasion for a party, and the beer’s on you! ;^)
But, in lieu of that, I’m looking forward to the “web portal” to the mission data that was mentioned in the past by the WISE team. (I’m not really sure what I’d do with the actual data, but I’m interested in seeing _what_ the data is, and how you present it & provide access to it. The dataset is apparently quite huge, and that must be quite a challenge to design such a portal.)
Any update on when that will be coming online? No rush, I’m sure you all are quite busy. Keep up the good work!