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NASA Announces PRIMA, a Budget-Friendly Space Telescope

10:07 AM ETConfirmed

Science Desk

In Short: NASA will develop PRIMA, a new space telescope that will explore the origins of planets and galaxies.

NASA announced Wednesday it will move forward with PRIMA, short for the Probe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics, a new space telescope that will explore the origins of planets and galaxies.

PRIMA will be the first of NASA’s Probe Explorers, a new line of observatories intended to do more science for less money. The mission will be led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The PRIMA mission will use spare parts from the James Webb Space Telescope to reduce costs. It will have a max project cost of $1.2 billion, not including launch and other costs.

NASA’s PRIMA mission will feature a cryogenically cooled 1.8-meter telescope, an imaging polarimeter, and a high-resolution spectrometer to conduct multimode spectroscopy.

PRIMA is scheduled to launch in 2033 and will be developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in collaboration with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Marshall Space Flight Center, as well as space agencies from Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom.

The mission will be orders of magnitude more sensitive than previous far-infrared space missions, enabling astronomers to perform breakthrough science on the origins of planetary atmospheres, the evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes, and the formation of dust and heavy elements in the universe.

NASA’s Associate Administrator for Science Mission Directorate, Nicky Fox, said, “The PRIMA mission is humanity’s next window into the deep Universe.”

Shawn Domagal-Goldman, director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division, added, “A single mission alone can’t probe all the Universe’s mysteries. But by extending the survey capabilities of our fleet into far-infrared wavelengths with PRIMA, we’re enabling an incredibly comprehensive look at the cosmos.”

What this adds

Background

What's confirmed

• “The PRIMA mission is humanity’s next window into the deep Universe,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, in a statement.
• The California Institute of Technology’s (Caltech) Infrared Processing & Analysis Center (IPAC) is designated as the mission science center “where raw data from the telescope is received, processed, and archived for use by astronomers seeking to answer some of the universe’s deepest mysteries,” according to Caltech.
• “PRIMA represents a giant leap for far-infrared astronomy,” said Caltech President Ray Jayawardhana.

What's still developing

• The agency’s space telescopes typically fall into lower-cost “Explorer-class” missions, with cost caps in the range of a few hundred million dollars, or flagship observatories like the recently launched Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which came with a price tag of some $4.3 billion.
• But it wasn’t clear until recently whether NASA’s science budget, which is under pressure from the Trump administration, would be sufficient to actually start developing one.
• NASA said a concept study for AXIS indicated it would not meet the agency’s schedule and budget constraints.
• PRIMA will be led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which has also found itself in an institutional crisis, with few missions in development and a series of layoffs.
• With the Probe Explorers, NASA officials seek to find a better balance between the smaller Explorer missions and multibillion-dollar flagships.
• NASA has studied potential Probe Explorer mission concepts for several years after an independent panel of scientists recommended the new mission category.
• PRIMA was the sole finalist for the first Probe Explorer mission after NASA disqualified a competing mission, an X-ray observatory known as AXIS, earlier this year.
• The scientist leading the AXIS concept study blamed disruptions and mismanagement at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the NASA location charged with leading the AXIS mission if it moved forward into development.
• The agency said Wednesday PRIMA was moving into what’s referred to as Phase B development.
• NASA officials cleared Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft for flight Thursday after a “thorough and comprehensive” review of the crew capsule’s readiness, setting the stage for final pre-launch preparations at Cape Canaveral ahead of liftoff Dec. 20 on an unpiloted demonstration mission to the International Space Station.
• That allows for further development of the preliminary design and for NASA to conduct technical and budget reviews.
• They helped develop the type of detectors featured on PRIMA that will allow it to operate its far-infrared cameras and spectrometer.

Sources

• Ars Technicalink
• Caltechlink
• Space.comlink
• Spaceflight Nowlink
• Sciencedailylink
• Universe Todaylink
• Thedebrieflink
• Science Newslink
• Scitechdailylink
• Scientific Americanlink
• Ipmnewsroomlink
• NASAlink
• Spaceflightnowlink
• The Guardianlink
• WarpBeat — background on NASA Announces PRIMA Space Telescope Project link
• WarpBeat — background on NASA Announces PRIMA, a Budget-Friendly Space Telescope link
• Space Riddles — video link