Welcome to the GSMT Program Office

Mission Statement

The Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope Program Office (GSMTPO) will ensure broad Astronomy Community access to an extremely large telescope (ELT: aperture >20 meters) contemporary in time with ALMA and JWST, by playing a key role in scientific and technical studies leading to the creation of the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope. GSMTPO will act as the NSF “Program Manager”, advising the NSF regarding scientific and technical progress of active ELT projects.

AURA Perspectives on the GSMT: Last update on GSMT activities May 6, 2008 (located on the AURA website).

GSMT Program Office Background and Scope of Work

In May 2000 the Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee (AASC) recommended, as its highest priority large ground-based initiative for this decade, the construction of a 30-meter aperture Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT). The AURA New Initiatives Office was formally established in January 2001 to work towards the goal of being able to start construction of GSMT by the end of this decade in order to complement NGST and ALMA. A decade from now, astronomers will have access to major new tools on the ground (ALMA) and in space (JWST). To exploit these tools fully will require a new generation optical/infrared telescope with:

Angular resolution matched to ALMA;
Sensitivity sufficient to characterize the faintest sources imaged by NGST; and
A combination of field of view and collecting area matched to efficient study of the first emerging large-scale structures in the distant universe. As part of its activities, NIO carried out a variety of technical studies, including development of a GSMT “Point Design.” Scientific studies related to GSMT were (and are) concentrated in the GSMT SWG.

On June 11, 2003 AURA and the CELT Development Corporation completed negotiations and signed a Letter of Intent to work together in carrying out a design and development effort that would achieve the vision of the Decadal Survey for a Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope. At the same time, AURA perceived that, although its primary obligation was to further the specific goals of the Decadal Survey for the building of a thirty-meter-class telescope through a public/private partnership, an additional responsibility existed to maintain a linkage and engagement with other telescope groups including the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) group and ESO.

Resources for these efforts came from AURA (NOAO and Gemini) staff, and from funding through a proposal submitted to the NSF on 30 June, 2004, “Enabling a Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT) for the U.S. Astronomical Community”.

This proposal requested $39.4M to provide funding for Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope development and was to provide support for the TMT design and development phase, for a second extremely large telescope (ELT) concept, and for related technology and instrument development efforts, public outreach, and a theory challenge program. GMT was subsequently chosen as the second ELT concept by a competitive review. Some funding, totaling approximately $3M, has been provided under this proposal in fiscal years 2005 and 2006, with additional funds anticipated in fiscal years 2007 and 2008, possibly totaling $10M.

In 2006, the National Science Foundation (NSF) conducted a Senior Review of all its astronomical facilities. This was primarily driven by the realization that the expectations implied by the decadal survey could not be met within the decade with plausibly available funds. The goal of the review process was to identify cuts and consequent savings within existing programs in order to support new initiatives. However, in the case of NOAO no programmatic cuts were recommended in current operations. Instead, the Senior Review indicated that the scope and pace of new initiatives, specifically including GSMT, should be matched to the probable availability of federal funds. Accordingly, it was recommended that NIO efforts be redirected to focus on leadership and planning, rather than engaging in direct participation in one project at this early stage. This role will be carried out under the renewed cooperative agreement by the GSMT Program Office as an entity integrated into the NOAO System Development division, rather than as a separate AURA entity.

Current Goals

As recommended by the Senior Review, promote the development of both TMT and GMT at a pace that recognizes the timescales of the MREFC and federal budget processes. At present, both projects believe that they can secure non-federal construction funding on a faster timescale, so that eventual NSF support would most likely come in the form of contributions to operations and supplemental funding such as additional instrumentation or other facility enhancements.
Understand and champion the national needs for a GSMT in any public/private partnership. This implies:
- Establishing and running a national community Science Working Group;
- Establishing and maintaining the national Design Reference Mission (DRM) to set scientific performance expectations for candidate designs;
- Providing an independent evaluation of the community operational needs, costs, and scientific sociology of a GSMT — then leading the community in understanding the implications of these for both a GSMT and the necessary underlying instrumental and human resource capability;
- Providing the results of these studies in a timely fashion as input to the next decadal survey. The NSF considers that a re-affirmation of GSMT’s priority is a necessary condition for commitment of construction or operations funding.
Advise NSF about engineering design performance necessary to respond to the DRM and the technical progress of both projects; this should not be interpreted as NOAO holding independent reviews of either project.
Assure a healthy scientific enterprise in the GSMT era. In this regard, NOAO, including GSMTPO, will lead in defining “the system”, being certain that it addresses an appropriate range of apertures, suite of instrumentation, and utilization of existing non-federal facilities where available. NOAO must assure that this system is robust against the delays and uncertainty in the path to an eventual GSMT.

The resources to carry out these activities will draw on the community as a whole, primarily through the SWG and the activities that it sponsors, and will make use of the expertise of NOAO staff, as well as other AURA staff engaged in the development or operation of major facilities.

Future Efforts

In the longer term, there will be additional efforts. These include:

Identifying areas of commonality or overlap in technology with a view towards optimizing federal and non-federal budgetary commitments;
Carrying out any appropriate independent technology efforts of importance to both programs and, ideally, to the OIR community as a whole, subject to available funding;
Participation in development of instruments, adaptive optics systems, and similar projects intended for use on ELTs to which the community has access;
Planning for the interfaces for community access, potentially including queue scheduling, as well as archiving and archive access;
Assist NSF in defining and realizing possible alternatives to a competitive down-select between TMT and GMT;
AURA/NOAO will advise NSF on options for international collaboration at a governmental level.

Additional Links

Location

Organizational Chart

Staff Directory

GSMT Program Office

Working Towards a Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope