NSF is conducting its first examination of spending across all wavelengths in ground-based astronomy. The so-called senior review aims to cut spending by $30 million a year on existing facilities to bolster current top priorities and start paying for future ones.
A committee will “advise us on the balance of programs, and in particular how we might rebalance to make faster progress on new facilities without losing strength at existing ones,” says NSF astronomy division head Wayne Van Citters. He expects the committee to consider financial data and scientific justification from the optical-infrared, solar, and radio astronomy observatories, NSF schemes for cutting spending, various reviews, and input from the astronomy community. Chaired by Roger Blandford, director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University, the committee begins meeting this month and is supposed to give NSF its recommendations next spring. (For more information, including a schedule...
