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Large Missions Concept Studies for the 2020 Decadal Survey

2015

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About Large Missions Concept Studies

To Study Four Large Mission Concepts That Could Meet Scientific Objectives

In January 2015, Paul Hertz, Director of the NASA Astrophysics Division, issued a memo to the astronomical community to stimulate planning for the 2020 Decadal Survey.

In the memo, Dr. Hertz directed the three Program Analysis Groups (PAGs) to solicit input from the astronomical community on four large mission concepts that were drawn from the 2010 Decadal Survey and NASA Visionary Roadmap.

The Astro2020 Decadal Survey about To Study Four Large Mission Concepts That Could Meet Scientific Objectives
In this image of PSR B1509-58 (about 170,000 light-years from Earth), X-rays from NASA's Chandra in gold are seen along with infrared data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope in red, green and blue.
In this image of PSR B1509-58 (about 170,000 light-years from Earth), X-rays from NASA's Chandra in gold are seen along with infrared data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope in red, green and blue.
NASA/CXC/SAO: X-ray; NASA/JPL-Caltech: Infrared

Large Mission Concepts for Study

  • Far Infrared Surveyor –This telescope concept would provide an order of magnitude or more performance increase above Herschel in one or more of the areas of sensitivity, spectral resolution, and angular resolution.
  • Habitable-Exoplanet Imaging Mission – This telescope would be capable of direct imaging and spectroscopy of a rocky planet in the habitable zone of a nearby star.
  • UV/Optical/IR Surveyor – This telescope concept would provide an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity above the Hubble Space Telescope, a wavelength coverage potentially as broad as 10 µm to 91 nm, and carrying one or more instruments for a variety of imaging or spectroscopic measurements.
  • X-ray Surveyor – This telescope concept would provide as much as two orders of magnitude improvement in sensitivity above Chandra. It also potentially could provide improvements in one or more of the parameters of spectral resolution, field of view, or angular resolution

Events

Meetings, Seminars, Conferences, Workshops, and other events

A large, bright star shines from the center with smaller stars scattered throughout the image. A clumpy cloud of material surrounds the central star, with more material above and below than on the sides, in some places allowing background stars to peek through. The cloud material is yellow closer to the star, and turns purple at its outer edges.

4 – 8 January 2016

227th Meeting of the AAS

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Watch a cosmic gamma-ray fireworks show in this animation using just a year of data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Each object’s magenta circle grows as it brightens and shrinks as it dims. The yellow circle represents the Sun following its apparent annual path across the sky. The animation shows a subset of the LAT gamma-ray records now available for more than 1,500 objects in a new, continually updated repository. Over 90% of these sources are a type of galaxy called a blazar, powered by the activity of a supermassive black hole.Credit: NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center/Daniel Kocevski

3 – 14 August 2015

XXIX General Assembly of the IAU

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A black, deep space image is dominated by what appears to be a large snowflake-like feature with a bright white core and 8 pinkish orange spikes. It is surrounded by additional wisps of pinkish orange and blue gas.

19 March 2015

Joint PAG Executive Committee Meeting

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This view of the Sunflower galaxy highlights a variety of infrared wavelengths captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

3 – 5 June 2015

Far IR Surveyor Workshop

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Artist's Concept of Exoplanet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb

13 – 14 June 2015

ExoPAG Meeting

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IC 63 Ghost Nebula

25 – 26 June 2015

UV / Vis SIG Meeting

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Swift’s X-Ray Telescope captured the afterglow of GRB 221009A about an hour after it was first detected. The bright rings form as a result of X-rays scattered by otherwise unobservable dust layers within our galaxy that lie in the direction of the burst. The dark vertical line is an artifact of the imaging system.Credit: NASA/Swift/A. Beardmore (University of Leicester)

29 June – 1 July 2015

HEAD Special Meeting on High Energy Large- and Medium-Class Space Missions in the 2020s

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This image, containing data from NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes, shows a cluster of young stars expected to burn for billions of years.

20 August 2015

COPAG Town Hall
Planning for the the 2020 Decadal Survey: Activities Related to Large Mission Concepts

PDF
Resembling an opulent diamond tapestry, this image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows a glittering star cluster that contains a collection of some of the brightest stars seen in our Milky Way galaxy called Trumpler 14.

10 March 2015

COPAG Town Hall

PDF

Documents

Science Division Documents

Paul Hertz Charge to the PAGs for 2020 Decadal Planning

Sep 16, 2025

PDF (223.54 KB)

Paul Hertz AAS PAG Plenary Presentation, January 2015

Sep 16, 2025

PDF (5.95 MB)

Enduring Quests, Daring Visions: NASA Astrophysics in the Next Three Decades – December 20, 2013

Aug 12, 2025

PDF (29.45 MB)

Presentations to the COPAG

Far-IR Surveyor Concept

Aug 12, 2025

PDF (18.34 MB)

X-ray Surveyor: Science Drivers and Strawman Mission Design

Sep 15, 2025

PDF (3.44 MB)

Large UV/Optical/IR Telescope Surveyor

Aug 12, 2025

PDF (1.68 MB)

HabEx: Notional Mission Properties and Science Applications

Sep 15, 2025

PDF (566.21 KB)

Supporting Documents

TPF-C Levine paper (See Science Goals, Sec. 2)

Aug 12, 2025

PDF (2.54 MB)

The New Worlds Observer

Aug 12, 2025

PDF (3.77 MB)

AURA Report: From Cosmic Birth to Living Earths

Aug 12, 2025

PDF (12.43 MB)

Recommendations to the COPAG Executive Committee by the SIG #2

Sep 27, 2025

PDF (327.80 KB)

Report to Paul Hertz on the Results of the Community Survey on a Possible Delay in the 2020
Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics

Sep 27, 2025

PDF (1.08 MB)

White Papers

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Large Missions White Paper Solicitation

Sep 27, 2025

PDF (335.12 KB)

Science Cases for Ultraviolet Polarimetry in the 21st Century

Sep 15, 2025

PDF (185.35 KB)

Mapping Turbulent Energy Dissipation through Shocked Molecular Hydrogen in the Universe

Sep 15, 2025

PDF (2.36 MB)

Are Flagships the Best Way to Advance Astrophysics?

Sep 15, 2025

PDF (2.69 MB)

CubeSats for Astrophysics

Sep 15, 2025

PDF (755.69 KB)

The Dusty Co-evolution of Black Holes and Galaxies: A Science Case for a Large Far-IR Space Telescope

Sep 15, 2025

PDF (1.15 MB)

Actuated Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer Mirror Development

Sep 15, 2025

PDF (349.81 KB)

Astrophysics Enabled by Extreme Contrast Ratio Technologies

Sep 15, 2025

PDF (78.00 KB)

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An illustration of Sun-like star HD 181327 and its surrounding debris disk. The star is at top right. It is surrounded by a far larger debris disk that forms an incomplete ellpitical path and is cut off at right. There’s a huge cavity between the star and the disk. The debris disk is shown in shades of light gray. Toward the top and left, there are finer, more discrete points in a range of sizes. The disk appears hazier and smokier at the bottom. The star is bright white at center, with a hazy blue region around it. The background of space is black. The label Artist's Concept appears at lower left.