THE FUTURE OF ASTRONOMY

It’s Looking Up

With all the major discoveries in astronomy that are announced each year, is it possible that “it’s all been discovered”? No. Astronomers have barely scratched the surface of what there is to learn about the universe. There’s a lot more exploring and explaining to do. Furthermore, there is so much data pouring in from our current crop of observatories that there’s plenty of work for researchers, graduate students, advanced amateurs, and even some good undergraduate and high school students to do. There is so much information streaming in through our observatories that serendipitous discoveries await any astronomy data miners who dig into those observational treasure troves.

What’s On the Drawing Boards?

The future of astronomy is taking shape now. Over the next decade, we will see and hear about discoveries made with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). Extended installations such as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and others are being planned and built in radio-quiet areas of our planet. In the slightly more distant future, astronomers plan to build radio telescope arrays on the far side of the Moon, well away from the radio frequency interference that pollutes much of Earth’s airwaves and makes things difficult for specific types of radio astronomy.

In optical astronomy, the next big thing on the ground is the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT) to be built on the Big Island of Hawaii. At the heart of this project is a thirty-meter (almost 100-foot) segmented mirror, which will be able to carry out optical and infrared astronomy, returning some of the sharpest images yet of the universe. The United States, China, and India are partners in the project, as well as the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

Infrared space astronomy will get a boost when the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) goes into orbit sometime in the next decade. It’s the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and has a planned five-to-ten-year mission. Like the Spitzer Space Telescope and other infrared-enabled observatories, JWST will continue astronomy’s look at the processes of star birth and star death, attempt direct imaging of extrasolar planets, and search out light from the earliest epochs of the universe.

Planetary Exploration

The exploration of our solar system will continue as NASA sends missions to Mars and continues the missions to Saturn and Pluto that are already underway. China is taking a long look at lunar exploration, and there are rumors that it is also interested in Mars and maybe a few asteroids. Its modernization includes a new concentration on astronomy and so China is building new observatories and educating masses of new researchers. Chile and Argentina are partnering on major new observatories in South America, and the European Space Agency is planning new missions to study Earth’s climate and a Mars Sample Return mission as a follow-up to its highly successful Mars Express program. In addition, ESA is planning the ambitious Cosmic Vision roadmap of missions to search out dark matter, study the Sun, and visit Jupiter.

Distant Horizons

The exploration of deep space is still very much on everyone’s agenda. ESA has on the drawing board an exoplanet search mission called Plato and a gravitational wave program (with NASA) called LISA. In the United States, the 8.4-meter telescope called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is in the planning stages. It will image the entire sky every few nights. It is planned for construction on Cerro Pachón in Chile, the same mountain that houses the Gemini South Telescope. Once built, it will map the Milky Way, measure the light from distant objects to detect weak gravitational lensing, look for near-earth asteroids and Kuiper Belt objects (out beyond the orbit of Neptune), and be on the lookout for short-lived events such as nova and supernova outbursts.

One thing that is certain is that astronomy of the future will not be limited to a few countries. Astronomy as a science has changed from “lone geniuses at the telescope” to large, multi-national collaborations of people who work together for many years toward a common scientific goal. The countries that participate in these Big Science projects will require talented, well-educated students to learn about astronomy and continue their work into the far future. In the United States, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM learning) all aim to bring students into the future. All of these disciplines are needed to continue humanity’s reach into the skies as we yearn for a better understanding of the cosmos.