Astronomy has a bright future.
The universe is revealed in minute detail with the current generation of large optical telescopes. close to the big bang. There is hope that mysteries will be solved dark matter And dark energy It will be resolved. Thousands outer planets has been discovered, and astronomers may be approaching the first detection of life beyond Earth.
But observations of the cosmic frontier involve extremely faint targets, and astronomers are always hungry for more light. To continue peering further into unknown regions of the universe, the next generation of giant telescopes on the ground and in orbit will cost billions of dollars each. This price tag creates a conflict between scientific expectations and financial realities.
Relating to: The 10 largest telescopes in the world
Cost of Large Glass
For most of the history of astronomy until 1980 there was an approximation. scaling of telescope cost by mirror diameter, where the cost was equal to the diameter of the telescope multiplied by the 2.8 power. This meant that if the size doubled the cost increased sevenfold, if the size tripled the cost increased twenty-twofold. Many people doubted that the telescope was larger than that. Palomar 5 meters would ever be built.
But over the past four decades, telescope costs have increased at a shallower rate depending on size, breaking the previous cost curve. innovations What led to this change was thinner and lighter mirrors, the practice of creating a large collecting area from a mosaic of smaller mirrors. fast optical Enabling more compact telescope designs and reducing the size of telescope housings. Thanks to these innovations sixteen telescopes The towers, with diameters ranging from 6 meters to 12 meters, were built between 1993 and 2006.
The Search for Massive Telescopes
The next generation of extremely large telescopes will have 100 times more light gathering power and 10 times better image quality than the Hubble Space Telescope. However, they have serious financial problems. There are two American-led projects with international partners. Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project uses a design with 492 mirror segments. Facing the winds of opposition native Hawaiians They decided to build another large telescope on Mauna Kea, which they considered a sacred site. Another project is Giant Magellanic Telescope (GMT) combines seven 8.4-metre mirrors to create an effective aperture of 25 metres.
The TMT project has been stalled while they negotiate a way to begin construction in Hawaii. GMT and another large telescope, built in Chile Rubin Observatoryfaces increasing costs. Pandemic, inflation and supply chain problems we are guilty. TMT and GMT will cost approximately $3 billion each. Both have philanthropic support but also federal funding. Supported for a time by the National Science Foundation (NSF) both projects. However, recently, National Science Board It set a $1.6 billion cap on federal support for large telescopes and gave NSF until May to decide which projects to support. It will be a big telescope left out in the cold.
Meanwhile, Europeans are sitting pretty. Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is a third massive telescope currently under construction in Chile. ELT does not face financial obstacles because it was built by . European Southern ObservatoryIt is financed by an intergovernmental agreement. With a diameter of 39 meters, the ELT is the largest of the three telescopes and completed firstIn 2028.
The Telescope That Eaten Astronomy
Cost of space telescopes a thousand times more They weigh more per kilogram than ground-based telescopes, but are worth their higher price. These telescopes take advantage of the total darkness of the space environment, and many types of radiation that these telescopes can observe, such as gamma rays, ultraviolet light, and infrared radiation, cannot penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere to reach ground-based telescopes.
One such instrument, the Hubble Space Telescope, total amount $16 billion since the U.S. Congress approved the mission in 1977. Another, NASA’s James Webb Telescope, has faced delays and technical difficulties and its budget has ballooned to $5 billion. The price tag helped earn the nickname “”The telescope that ate astronomy” — and that was in 2010. When launched in 2021, price tag It doubled to $10 billion.
NASA has other exciting missions on the way. Rome Space TelescopeThe cost of this satellite, which has a 2.4-meter mirror but a hundred times the field of view of Hubble, is probably too high 3 billion dollarsAnd Habitable Worlds ObservatoryRobots designed to “sniff” the atmospheres of Earth-like planets for signs of biology will soon arrive 11 billion dollars.
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These space telescope missions are taking a big hit NASA budget this happened has been decreasing for twenty years. Just like NSF’s budget caps, large capital projects leave less money to spend on other types of research. But the private sector can come to the rescue. SpaceX’s Starship It can be used to launch a 6.5-meter mirror in one piece, avoiding the complex and expensive folding mirrors used by JSWT. Same innovations used in ground-based telescopes reduce cost telescopes in space
As we face the cost of monitoring the distant universe and bringing back rocks from a nearby planet, astronomers and planetary scientists are brought back to Earth in a major coup. While it may seem like a golden age for astronomy, the shine is tarnished by the cost of all that gold and the difficult trade-offs that must be made in a time of fiscal austerity.