Getting the billion-dollar PRIMA space telescope off the ground

Flora Lichtman (0:02)

Hey, it's Flora, and you're listening to Science Friday.

Late last month, NASA announced that a new telescope called Prima was getting a green light and advancing to the next stage of development, entering something called Phase B of the development process.

And we said, oh, that's awesome, but what does that mean exactly? How does a billion-dollar space project get thought up, designed, approved, and constructed?

Joining me now is Dr. Jason Glenn. He led the concept study for Prima. Basically, it's his idea. And he's now a professor at the University of Virginia. Hey, Jason, welcome to Science Friday.

Jason Glenn (0:42)

Good morning.

Flora Lichtman (0:44)

Okay, first off, you sold NASA on this idea. Congratulations. But sell us, in layman's terms, why is this telescope so cool? What is it answer that we can't answer now?

Jason Glenn (0:56)

There are a number of really interesting and pressing science questions in astrophysics that are driving the field forward currently. But we don't have the observational capability to address these yet. So we know that there are many planets around other stars in the Milky Way now. NASA has confirmed over 6,000 planets around other stars, and we want to understand how they got there.

Prima enables us to do that, which no other observatory can do by itself, because it enables us to figure out the crucial role of water in the formation of planets.

Another is understanding the abundance of the elements, like carbon and oxygen in there, and we can do that. The other is that galaxies in the modern day universe, all have supermassive black holes in their centers. It begs the question, how did they get there? That mystery has stood for 25 years, and we can make unique observations with this observatory that will let us answer that question, and it all comes down to the supersensitive detector technology that we've developed for the observatory.

Flora Lichtman (2:02)

What does Prima specifically bring to the table that we don't have?

Jason Glenn (2:07)

What Prima brings to the table is brand new observational capability in the far infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

And the technology in this part of the spectrum has lagged other areas because its only application is really in astrophysics. So it's been up to our community to develop it. So we've kind of lagged behind other areas where there were commercial interests in the technologies. And that's why it took persistent decades of investment.

Flora Lichtman (2:35)

Well, I wanted to ask about that because when you're pitching a project like this, are you planning for what you could possibly do in 10 years? Or do you have to have all the sort of technology in hand?

Jason Glenn (2:49)

That's a very good question. Really, you want a balance.

You want to be just on the edge because you want to take maximum advantage of the new technology that you're developing or that's coming along. So you definitely have to have the technology mature by the time you get the go ahead to build the observatory. But you can be in the latter stages of the development and maturation of it when you propose if you are confident and you can demonstrate that you're going to get to the endpoint in time.

Flora Lichtman (3:21)

So you can't, it's not Blue Sky. It's not like, oh, if we could travel through time, this is what we should do and I think we could get there. It's like, we're on the cusp of having this working and we're going to rely on that technology, but we're pretty sure we can get it done.

Jason Glenn (3:35)

That's absolutely correct. There are a lot of taxpayer dollars that go into an endeavor like this, and so we need to be sure that we can do it.

Flora Lichtman (3:44)

Okay. You just got through phase A. Congratulations.

Jason Glenn (3:47)

Thank you.

Flora Lichtman (3:49)

How many teams were you competing against and is it quite competitive? Just take us inside, behind the curtain.

Jason Glenn (3:55)

Oh, it's competitive. The idea for a probe, an astrophysics probe was first floated in 2016, and initial concept study proposals, I think there were 38 submitted.

Then after the decadal survey of astrophysics, which was commissioned by the National Academy of Science to inform Congress, recommended that NASA create a probe class mission. Probes were a new class because they were very large in ambition compared to the explorers that existed before. So this is a bit of an experiment for NASA.

Flora Lichtman (4:37)

Is it like somewhere in between a James Webb and something smaller?

Jason Glenn (4:41)

Yes, that's exactly right. So NASA put out a call for proposals, and there were eight proposals that were submitted in step one. And then NASA down selected to two.