Next-Generation Space Telescope

Construction of NGST will be challenging. At present we do not have a launch vehicle that is capable of carrying 

Rodger I. Thompson is supported in part by NASA grant NAG 5-3042 and the University of Arizona. 

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KENNICUTT, R.C. 1998b, in The Next Generation Space Telescope Science Drivers and Technological Challenges, 34th Liege Astrophysics Colloquium, 81 Krauss, L.M., Chaboyer, B. 2003, Science 299, 65 Kulkarni, V., Fall, S.M., 2002, ApJ 580, 732... 

E.-D. Knohl Fabrication of large and fast mirrors with extraordinarily smooth surfaces in The Next Generation Space Telescope Workshop (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore 1989) pp. 209-216... 

Observations of distant objects at infrared wavelengths has been deemed so important that NASA s largest future project is dedicated to that mission. It is called the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) and is scheduled to be launched before 2010. A description of the current status of NGST is given in section IX.B. 

OPTICAL FABRICATION FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OPTICAL TELESCOPES, TERRESTRIAL AND SPACE... 

A strong collaboration between micro-optics and astronomy will certainly lead to reach the best scientific return for the lowest cost in next generation astronomical instrumentation for ground-based and space telescopes. 

AMANDA has yet to observe an extraterrestrial neutrino source, but she has demonstrated the cost-effectiveness and robustness of the technique. The detector is very versatile it addresses many different neutrino physics subjects and sets the most stringent upper limits on Galactic and extragalactic neutrino fluxes. The improved search for diffuse fluxes, which has ruled out several predictions, along with the extended four-year search for point sources has started to constrain the enormous parameter space that exist in many models of neutrino production. The reported experimental limits on the diffuse neutrino flux are less than an order of magnitude above the Waxman-Bahcall bound ( Waxman and Bahcall, 1999). As more of the data on tape is analyzed, AMANDA sensitivities will continue to improve. This is a very exciting time in neutrino astronomy and we look forward to neutrino astrophysics with next generation of neutrino telescopes. 

Future space missions (such as GLAST) will be able to confirm any spectral variations in the diffuse emission on sufficiently small angular scales (a few degrees) to permit a serious test of the various production models. Further observations with the next generation of ground-based air-Cherenkov GeV and TeV telescopes (where to date only tantalizing upper limits have been obtained) should also provide important confirmation of the GeV excess observed by EGRET. 

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