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Cosmic Origins

Studies and Initiatives

NASA funds concept studies which help refine mission designs, assess technical readiness, and identify potential risks. This process ensures that only the most scientifically valuable, technically feasible, and cost-effective missions advance toward full development and eventual launch.

The ASTRA Initiative

The Fornax Initiative

Previous Studies

The ASTRA Initiative

The Astrophysics Strategic Technology & Research Accelerator Initiative

NASA’s greatest telescopes continue to expand our frontiers in both literal and metaphorical ways. They advance the limits of humanity’s views of the cosmos while they address profound questions: How does the universe work? How did we get here? Are we alone?

To maintain US leadership, APD is launching the Astrophysics Strategic Technology & Research Accelerator (ASTRA) Initiative. At every stage, NASA will collaborate with industry, academia, and international partners to advance necessary technologies, manufacturing capabilities, and reduce costs. ASTRA aims to reduce the total cost, time-to-science, and schedule risk of future strategic missions, aligning with the guidance from Astro2020, LSSM, and AMP.

ASTRA is intended to support mission concept studies and technology maturation for future large strategic astrophysics missions recommended by Astro2020. Initial activities are expected to include work related to a potential future strategic X-ray mission concept, along with the identification and maturation of technologies required to enable next-generation large strategic missions. This effort is consistent with NASA’s ongoing implementation of the Astro2020 Decadal Survey and helps ensure that future strategic mission opportunities are supported by mature mission concepts and enabling technologies.

Starfield with dark dust lanes diagonally across the image. Bright-white and rust-colored clouds extend both sides of the dust lane.

The Prawn Nebula is a massive stellar nursery located in the constellation Scorpious, about 6,000 light years from Earth. Though the nebula stretches 250 light-years and covers a space four times the size of the full moon, it emits light primarily in wavelengths the human eye cannot detect, making it extremely faint to earthbound viewers. Hubble’s gaze, however, shows a small section of the nebula here in both visible and invisible infrared light, capturing dazzling detail of the nebula’s structure, including bright areas of glowing gas. The Prawn Nebula, also known as IC 4628, is an emission nebula, which means its gas has been energized, or ionized, by the radiation of nearby stars.

NASA, ESA, and J. Tan (Chalmers University of Technology); Processing; Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

ACROSS

The Astrophysics Cross-Observatory Science Support Initiative

The ACROSS initiative aims to advance time-domain and multimessenger (TDAMM) science by facilitating the coordination of observational resources and scientific expertise to enable rapid, unified, and effective responses to maximize the scientific return of the astrophysics community. Advancing this field relies not only on technological innovation and scientific insight, but equally on the collaboration, communication, and infrastructure necessary to support multifaceted exploration of the universe.

The situational awareness tools developed by ACROSS are a centralized interface for coordinating follow-up observations in time-domain and multimessenger astronomy. By aggregating real-time data from multiple observatories, including mission status, scheduling, visibility, and constraints, these dashboards offer a centralized view that enables scientists to quickly assess the feasibility of follow-up observations across facilities. This integrated approach streamlines decision-making during fast-paced transients, improves coordination among missions, and helps identify optimal follow-up strategies that align with each observatory’s capabilities.

ACROSS enables TDAMM astrophysics by centralizing access to critical resources, including information on TDAMM-relevant missions and their observational capabilities, maintaining an up-to-date calendar of past and upcoming conferences, and a list of funding opportunities relevant to TDAMM science.

This artist's concept illustrates a supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun. Supermassive black holes are enormously dense objects buried at the hearts of galaxies.

This artist's concept illustrates a supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of our sun. Supermassive black holes are enormously dense objects buried at the hearts of galaxies. (Smaller black holes also exist throughout galaxies.) In this illustration, the supermassive black hole at the center is surrounded by matter flowing onto the black hole in what is termed an accretion disk. This disk forms as the dust and gas in the galaxy falls onto the hole, attracted by its gravity.
Also shown is an outflowing jet of energetic particles, believed to be powered by the black hole's spin. The regions near black holes contain compact sources of high energy X-ray radiation thought, in some scenarios, to originate from the base of these jets. This high energy X-radiation lights up the disk, which reflects it, making the disk a source of X-rays. The reflected light enables astronomers to see how fast matter is swirling in the inner region of the disk, and ultimately to measure the black hole's spin rate.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Fornax Initiative

Bringing Together Data, Compute, and Software So That Astronomers Can Focus on Science

NASA Astrophysics is developing the Fornax Initiative in collaboration with the NASA Astrophysics Archives and GSFC’s Astrophysics Projects Division (ApPD).

NASA's Astrophysics missions generate vast and complex datasets offering immense scientific potential. The vital role of NASA's Astrophysics archives in mission success is evident, as they have demonstrated that user-focused, technologically-rich data systems are key science multipliers. As the Astronomy 2020 Decadal Review emphasized, in the coming decade, frontier science will be done with multi-wavelength and multi-messenger analysis across large, complex data sets, which will only increasing the challenges of accessing big data, maintaining software, and obtaining sufficient computing resources.

Our goal is to support the science needs of a wide range of users, from those who are learning Python and would simply benefit from having access to a maintained Python environment for common astrophysics software to those who wish to perform complicated analyses that require significant cloud computing. For use cases that require more computing than can be provided by NASA through Fornax, we will build the system such that scientists can use the Fornax Scientific Components and the Fornax Science Console with their own cloud computing resources. This commitment to including all users is at the heart of how Fornax will realize the promise of the cloud in supporting Open Science.

This image of the Crab Nebula combines data from five different telescopes. It is know as the expanding gaseous remnant from a star that self-detonated as a supernova, briefly shining as brightly as 400 million suns.

In the summer of the year 1054 AD, Chinese astronomers saw a new "guest star," that appeared six times brighter than Venus. So bright in fact, it could be seen during the daytime for several months.
This "guest star" was forgotten about until 700 years later with the advent of telescopes. Astronomers saw a tentacle-like nebula in the place of the vanished star and called it the Crab Nebula. Today we know it as the expanding gaseous remnant from a star that self-detonated as a supernova, briefly shining as brightly as 400 million suns.
In the late 1960s astronomers discovered the crushed heart of the doomed star, an ultra-dense neutron star that is a dynamo of intense magnetic field and radiation energizing the nebula. Astronomers therefore need to study the Crab Nebula across a broad range of electromagnetic radiation, from X-rays to radio waves.

Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Dubner (IAFE, CONICET-University of Buenos Aires) et al.; A. Loll et al.; T. Temim et al.; F. Seward et al.; VLA/NRAO/AUI/NSF; Chandra/CXC; Spitzer/JPL-Caltech; XMM-Newton/ESA; and Hubble/STScI

Previous Studies

Galaxy Cluster SMACS 0723

SMD Large Missions Study

Conducted from October 2019 to October 2020, this internal NASA study was chartered by the Science Mission Directorate (SMD).

An intermediate spiral Seyfert galaxy named NGC 4151 viewed nearly face-on

Probe-Class Mission Study

The formal charge to the NASA Astrophysics Program Analysis Groups (PAGs) to provide feedback on the possibility of Astrophysics Probe Missions was issued 19 January 2016.

Image of a cloud of gas and dust with background stars; half shows visible light, half shows infrared light

Large Missions Study

2015-2019
In January 2015, Paul Hertz, Director of NASA APD, issued a memo to the astronomical community to stimulate planning for the 2020 Decadal Survey.

Lynx

The Lynx mission concept seeks to provide unprecedented X-ray vision into the universe. Lynx is one of four Decadal Survey Mission Concept Studies initiated in January 2016.

LUVOIR

The Large UV/Optical/IR Surveyor (LUVOIR) is a concept for a highly capable, multi-wavelength observatory with ambitious science goals. LUVOIR is one of four Decadal Survey Mission Concept Studies initiated in January 2016.

Artist 3d concept of the origins space telescope with gray shiny material around a metal tube with a mirror inside the tube

The Origins Space Telescope

The Origins Space Telescope (OST) is developing two concepts for a Far-Infrared Surveyor mission. OST is one of the four Decadal Survey Mission Concept Studies initiated in January 2016.

This artist's rendering shows the proposed starshade flying in sync with a space telescope. The giant sunflower-like structure would be used to acquire images of Earth-like rocky planets around nearby stars.

HabEx

The Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx) is a concept for a mission to directly image planetary systems around Sun-like stars. HabEx is one of the four Decadal Survey Mission Concept Studies initiated in January 2016.

Astrophysics Roadmap 2013
Enduring Questions, Daring Visions

This roadmap presents a science-driven 30-year vision for the future of NASA Astrophysics, seeking answers to age-old questions that are the enduring quests of humankind.

Swift's UV Portrait of the Andromeda Galaxy

UV/Visible Astrophysics Mission Concepts Study

2012
NASA, through the Astrophysics Division and its Cosmic Origins (COR) Program, is soliciting information ultraviolet (UV) and visible wavelength astrophysics science investigations.

Hubble's Deployment (1990)

Hubble Completion

2012
The Hubble Space Telescope is in a decaying orbit. To prevent the hazards created by such an event, the Cosmic Origins Program Office has undertaken a study of ways to complete the mission of the great observatory, either by controlled re-entry or placement into a long life orbit.