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Rival bids: two possible designs of new facility, from TRW and (inset) Lockheed-Martin. Credit: UNIVERSAL PICTORIAL

Representatives of US and European space agencies will meet later this month to begin formal discussions on collaboration on a Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), to be launched in the first decade of the next century.

The instrument would be optimized for infrared studies of very young galaxies, and would succeed the Hubble Space Telescope as the main observatory in space.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been conducting preliminary feasibility studies for the NGST project since spring 1996(see Nature 381, 465; 1996). The European Space Agency (ESA) has yet to begin a formal study, although ESA officials have told their US counterparts that Europe is interested in participating in the project, and might contribute as much as $200 million. That level of investment would place it in the category of ESA's new ‘flexible’ missions.

NASA hopes to build the telescope for around $500 million, beginning construction in 2003, with a launch planned for 2007. John Mather, the NGST project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, says the agency will spend an additional $150 million-$200 million over the next five years developing technologies for the telescope, including lightweight deployable optics. Launch and operational costs would also be extras, says Mather.

NASA will spend about $20 million in 1998 on NGST studies and technology development. Two industry contractors, Ball Aerospace and TRW, are already doing mission architecture studies in which the telescope would be in a stable orbit at least 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, where it would stay very cold. The mirror is likely to be deployable in segments that would have to be assembled in space.

NASA's designs are well ahead of ESA's, says Jean-Pierre Swings of the Institut d'Astrophysique at the University of Liège in Belgium, who heads a task force that will soon report to ESA on options for participating in the project. Swings says that European astronomers have a “very strong wish to be involved”. His task force of six scientists from outside the agency will recommend that ESA immediately begin technical studies, with the intention of eventually merging its design work with that of NASA. ESA's possible contributions include supplying an Ariane rocket launch, building ground stations and supplying science instruments.

According to Swings, the United States has a clear lead in infrared detector technology, but European scientists have other areas of expertise that could be useful. ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands is working on a superconducting-tunnel-junction camera that can simultaneously take images and spectra at ultraviolet, optical and near-infrared wavelengths. The instrument lost out in a recent competition for addition to the Hubble telescope in 2002, but could possibly be adapted for the new telescope.

The ESA-NASA meeting planned for 30 October in Washington is the beginning of a lengthy process that could eventually produce a memorandum of understanding about cooperation on the NGST.

Swings says it would not need to be a 50:50 partnership for European astronomers to benefit. Europeans have about 20 per cent of the viewing time on the Hubble telescope, which seems to serve the space community well, he says.

NASA hopes to fund its part of the NGST project by scaling down operations of the Hubble telescope. By not servicing Hubble after 2002, the agency could save two-thirds of its operating budget.