Aim High, Aim Long: Seeing

the Infinite Universe

John Mather

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Apr. 1, 2019

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When we were very young

GSFC Building 2 construction IBM 360 was a marvel

From one of a kind to AO

competition, 1974

IUE in space,

launch 1979

COBE in space,

launch 1989

Mather 2013

7

(as of 1985)

COBE cryo missions

WMAP all-sky map of CMB fluctuations, leading to

existence of galaxies, stars, etc.

WMAP team won Breakthrough Prize, 2017

Hubble servicing JWST

Hubble is

almost 29

M101 before and

after Hubble repairEvery galaxy has a

black hole in the

middle

More and more!

Over 2000 CubeSats launched

https://cubesats.gsfc.nasa.gov

SMM used Multimission

Modular Spacecraft, first

designed for servicing

Exponential Growth Continues

• Moore’s law for CPUs, was ~ 1.5 yr doubling,

now slower; thousands of incremental

improvements, huge market

• Launch rate ~ x1.4 in 8 yrs (4%/yr)

• Similar rate of infrastructure improvement?

• Space telescope mirror area, x7 in 31 yrs;

6.3%/yr

• Ground telescope mirror area, x16 in 33 yrs;

8.4%/yr

Some things are way better

• Purchase cards vs. 6 months of carbon

copies

• Travel approval in days vs. months

• Teleworking and video conferencing

• Online documentation

• No more plastic viewgraphs

• Supercomputer in every pocket or purse

• CAD/CAM & modeling

But “full cost accounting”

doesn’t track full cost

• Financial responsibility is good

• Spending top talent balancing

manpower spreadsheets isn’t

• No charge number for creative thinking

• Scientists submit many proposals for

0.1 FTE increments (grrr!)

External impulses

Plus: 22 government shutdowns, including 10 furloughs

8/2/2011, mag 5.8 quake,

Charlottesville

6/29/2012 Derecho

9/11/2001 9/24/2001 tornado, College Park

How much would you pay for

all the secrets of the Universe?• Worldwide budget to build great

space observatories: ~ 700 M$?

(~$1/ person/yr for North America,

Europe, & Japan)

• Cost for each: $2 - $10 B

• one every 3 – 15 years for all

topics

• But HST to JWST is ~ 31 yrs

Advanced LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational

wave Observatory) – daily announcements?

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Telescope (TESS)

“TESS has just accelerated our

chances of finding life on

another planet within the next

decade."

Sara Seager, a professor of planetary

science and physics at MIT and TESS

project member

closest 1,000 M stars

and source list for

JWST

ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter

Array) sees proto-planetary disk

2

0

Description

▪ Deployable infrared telescope with 6.5

meter diameter segmented adjustable

primary mirror

▪ Cryogenic temperature telescope and

instruments for infrared performance

▪ Launch on an ESA-supplied Ariane 5

rocket to Sun-Earth L2

▪ 5-year science mission (10-year goal)

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

www.JWST.nasa.gov

JWST Science Themes

End of the dark

ages: First light

and reionization

The assembly of

galaxies

Birth of stars and

proto-planetary

systems

Planetary

systems and

the origin of

life

Organization

▪ Mission Lead: Goddard Space Flight Center

▪ International collaboration with ESA & CSA

▪ Prime Contractor: Northrop Grumman Aerospace

Systems

▪ Instruments:

― Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) – Univ. of

Arizona

― Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) – ESA

― Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) – JPL/ESA

― Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) and Near IR

Imaging Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) – CSA

▪ Operations: Space Telescope Science Institute

Mather Ottawa Museum 2009May 20, 2009 2

1

Europa

Europa has an ocean, ice sheets, and

warm water spritzers

What’s a good landing spot?

WFIRST surveys NIR sky, measures Dark Energy, finds rare extreme objects, high z supernovae, examines AGN hosts with coronagraph

With mask

With mask and

deformable

mirrors

No mask

Planet

WFIRST Coronagraphy

WFIRST will achieve a >100,000,000 contrast ratio to enable direct

imaging of exoplanets

24 meters and up!

Giant Magellan 24 m

Telescope (GMT)

Thirty Meter

Telescope (TMT)

European Extremely Large

39 m Telescope (E-ELT)

Flattening the

mountain top for E-ELT

δθ = 3 milliarcsec

Adaptive Optics was for weapons, now

astronomy & football

Needs bright guide

star(s); how about a

satellite beacon?

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

LSST.org

This telescope will produce

the deepest, widest, image of

the Universe:

• 27-ft (8.4-m) mirror, the width

of a singles tennis court

• 3200 megapixel camera

• Each image the size of 40 full

moons

• 37 billion stars and galaxies

• 10 year survey of the sky

• 10 million alerts, 1000 pairs

of exposures, 15 Terabytes of

data .. every night!

The Laser Interferometer

Space Antenna (LISA) • New branch of astronomy!

• Space-based gravitational wave detector

• 3 spacecraft in 2,500,000 km equilateral triangle

• Laser interferometer senses changes of 1/100 size of an atom

30 m telescope ideas – Oegerle

study

With a 100 m starshade, could see and get

spectra for hundreds of solar systems

* 170,000 km altitude matches

observatory v ~ 400 m/sec

* Laser beacon enables AO

24-39 m ELT with

visible AO on Earth

Solar System at 5

pc in 1 minute

Image by Shaklan

Why astronomy doesn’t pay for everything

Can this future happen?

• Scientific questions still exciting

– Beginnings of everything, dark matter, dark

energy, and life elsewhere?

• Other people pay for growing infrastructure

– Electronics, robotics, optics, detectors, space

hardware

– NASA < 10% of worldwide space budget

– Astronomy < 10% of NASA budget

• YES!