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The rocky landscape for astrophysics
The President's budget request for NASA in fiscal year 2020 is for the wide-area infrared surveyor telescope (WFIRST). The WFIRST mission was the major space mission of the 2010 National Academies Decennial Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey, and its cancellation essentially repudiates the ten-year survey process. This action is proposed in the wake of the strong and bipartisan support of Congress, which had allocated "not less than $ 312,200,000 for WFIRST" during the 2019 fiscal year. WFIRST is considered an essential tool in the world of financial planning. arsenal of astrophysics to understand the universe in which we live.
In addition to the gaping hole in capacity that WFIRST had been specifically designed to fill the 2020s, the projected budget for the year has a significant impact on the future US leadership in space astrophysics. As the 10-year study of astrophysics 2020 begins to develop, the astrophysics community will have to step back and ask what is the value of their high-priority consensual recommendations when they are ignored. While NASA has called for an "ambitious survey" on the 2020 decade and supported four major conceptual studies of multi-billion dollar missions in recent years, this budget request for fiscal year 2020 provides no resource for an important future mission. To be precise, this budget request (including astrophysics and the budget of the James Webb Space Telescope) for the fiscal year 2020 and the five-year forecasts that accompany it range from 200 to 300 million. dollars below the equivalent of the astrophysical budget of 15 years ago during the 2005 fiscal year.
A three-day symposium is planned for early April 2019 on the theme "The landscape of space astrophysics for the 2020s and beyond". Much of the first day of the symposium was devoted to the scientific and technical approaches of the four major mission concepts (called Origins). Space Telescope, Lynx, HabEx and LUVOIR). Indeed, the community will have to struggle to define the interest of making a decennial survey when there are no resources to support the highest priority of the previous one. And counting on Congress to pay NASA's annual budget in the field of astrophysics is not a way to plan a ten-year portfolio.
Perhaps in addition to allocating funds to the fiscal year 2020 budget, Congress could also provide the decennial astrophysical 2020 survey with alternative budget and programmatic directions. which reflect its expectations for the next ten-year plan. The astrophysics budget must be between $ 1.6 billion and $ 1.8 billion to support a balanced program of large, medium and small missions implementing the highest scientific priorities. That's what the astrophysics budget would be if we simply increased the budget for fiscal year 2005 based on inflation. The Administration's budget request for fiscal year 2020 is far from allowing this balance – it does not maintain the leadership of the United States in the 2020s and beyond.
Jon A. Morse is former Director of the Astrophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters (2007-2011) and is currently Executive Director of the non-profit institute BoldlyGo and Collaborator. research in solar, stellar and planetary sciences. Harvard-Smithsonian Center Division for Astrophysics.
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