GMT and TMT Still in Limbo after External Review
Renderings of the Giant Magellan Telescope, left, and the Thirty Meter Telescope.
Left: GMTO Corporation / Right: M3 Engineering
The future of the proposed Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile and the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii remains cloudy following the release of a report last week evaluating whether the National Science Foundation should progress either project to its final design phase. Written by a panel of external experts, the report concludes that receiving NSF funding is “critical to both projects” but warns that pursuing either project could dominate the agency’s limited facilities budget and damage other research areas absent a significant and sustained budget increase from Congress.
Reacting to the report, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan stated that the agency agrees that “the success of the U.S. Extremely Large Telescope program hinges on securing the necessary resources from Congress.” (The ELT program is the vehicle through which NSF would fund one or both of the telescopes.) Panchanathan commissioned the report earlier this year to help guide his decision on whether NSF should proceed with one project, both projects, or neither project.
The report does not express a clear preference for one project over the other. Emphasizing the gravity of advancing either telescope to the final design phase, the report observes, “Entering FDP is not a commitment by NSF to fund construction; however, the community expectation and the past precedent is that no project has entered FDP without ultimately being built.”
This news brief originally appeared in FYI’s newsletter for the week of Dec. 16.
