Related papers: Large Instrument Development for Radio Astronomy
Radio astronomy observations in the coming decade will require new levels of sensitivity while mapping large regions of space with much greater efficiency than is achieved with current telescopes. This requires new instrumentation with the…
Some attempts to predict the very distant future of Radio Astronomy are given. It is not easy to predict a list of the first priority problems which may appear, but the facilities potential is more predictable. It is suggested, that in…
Observatories are complex scientific and technical institutions serving diverse users and purposes. Their telescopes, instruments, software, and human resources engage in interwoven workflows over a broad range of timescales. These…
Over the past century, major advances in astronomy and astrophysics have been largely driven by improvements in instrumentation and data collection. With the amassing of high quality data from new telescopes, and especially with the advent…
Radio astronomy has entered its golden era, with many revolutionary facilities such as SKA, ngVLA, and LOFAR2.0 coming online in the next decade. These facilities are certain to redefine radio astronomy. However, on smaller scales-such as…
Time-to-science is an important figure of merit for digital instrumentation serving the astronomical community. A digital signal processing (DSP) community is forming that uses shared hardware development, signal processing libraries, and…
The tens of millions of radio sources to be detected with next-generation surveys pose new challenges, quite apart from the obvious ones of processing speed and data volumes. For example, existing algorithms are inadequate for source…
The fields of Astronomy and Astrophysics are technology limited, where the advent and application of new technologies to astronomy usher in a flood of discoveries altering our understanding of the Universe (e.g., recent cases include LIGO…
The problems caused by the gap between system- and software-level architecting practices, especially in the context of Systems of Systems where the two disciplines inexorably meet, is a well known issue with a disappointingly low amount of…
Large sensor-based infrastructures for radio astronomy will be among the most intensive data-driven projects in the world, facing very high power demands. The geographically wide distribution of these infrastructures and their associated…
Stratospheric balloons offer cost-effective access to space and grant the opportunity for fast scientific innovation cycles and higher-risk explorations. In addition to science pathfinders, they serve as platforms for technology…
The rapid growth and diversity in service offerings and the ensuing complexity of information technology ecosystems present numerous management challenges (both operational and strategic). Instrumentation and measurement technology is, by…
In the distant past, telescopes were known, first and foremost, for the sizes of their apertures. Advances in technology are now enabling astronomers to build extremely powerful instruments to the extent that instruments have now achieved…
How should we invest our available resources to best sustain astronomy's track record of discovery, established over the past few decades? Two strong hints come from (1) our history of astronomical discoveries and (2) literature citation…
This invited white paper, submitted to the National Science Foundation in January of 2020, discusses the current challenges faced by the United States astronomical instrumentation community in the era of extremely large telescopes. Some…
For the field of high energy physics to continue to have a bright future, priority within the field must be given to investments in the development of both evolutionary and transformational detector development that is coordinated across…
Far-infrared astronomy has advanced rapidly since its inception in the late 1950's, driven by a maturing technology base and an expanding community of researchers. This advancement has shown that observations at far-infrared wavelengths are…
The world is changing fast, and so is the space sector. Planning for large scientific experiments two decades ahead may no longer be the most sensible approach. I develop the argument that large science experiments are becoming comparable…
Radio astronomy is facing critical challenges due to an ever-increasing human-made signal density filling up the radio spectrum. With the rise of satellites, mobile networks, and other wireless technologies, radio telescopes are struggling…
Over its more than thirty-year history, the Advanced Technologies and Instrumentation (ATI) program has provided grants to support technology development for ground-based astronomy. Research from this program has advanced adaptive optics,…