Two giant telescopes may vie for federal funding

Science : Last month NSF officials met with representatives from two California-based consortia that are interested in building the next US giant ground-based telescope. The two groups—one based at Caltech, which is designing the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), and one at the Carnegie Institution of Science, which is working on the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)—may enter into competition for NSF funding of their projects. Such funding would provide more than just financial support: It could also be seen as a vote of confidence and could lead to the securing of additional funding from other partners, both public and private. However, there has been some confusion stemming from the language used in a Senate report that accompanied the proposed 2012 NSF budget; it’s directed that the telescope be “developed ... on domestic soil.” Because the TMT would be built in Hawaii and the GMT in Chile, some feel that the latter would be automatically disqualified. Such a qualification was not part of the National Academies’ 2010 committee report , which had recommended the NSF face-off between the two projects, according to Roger Blandford of Stanford University, who chaired the committee.