Funding for Adaptive Optics in the United States by the National Science Foundation 2006-2009: An Update

TL;DR

This paper updates funding analysis for astronomical adaptive optics in the US from 2006 to 2009, showing stagnant public investment and highlighting funding disparities with ESO.

Contribution

It provides an updated assessment of NSF funding for adaptive optics in the US, revealing no significant increase since 2006 and emphasizing funding gaps compared to ESO.

Findings

US NSF AO funding remained around $7M in 2009.

No significant increase in public AO funding since 2006.

ESO's AO funding exceeds US efforts by a factor of three.

Abstract

In 2006 I published an article in GeminiFocus that examined funding for astronomical adaptive optics related technology and instrumentation in the United States from 1995 through mid-2006. That article concluded that based on projections then current, AO implementation on public and private telescopes in the U.S. will soon seriously lag that on the ESO VLT as measured by funds available. It called for a significant infusion of public funds for AO development and implementation so that when combined with private funds, the U.S. astronomical community as a whole would be able to take full advantage of AO systems on both public and private telescopes. In 2006 I estimated that the total amount of public (NSF) funds that would be available in 2009 for AO related non-science activities would be about $6M. This article updates the analysis done in my previous article. I show that for 2009 the funds for AO related non-science activities are about $7M in spite of the termination of the AODP program. Federal stimulus funds (ARRA) to the NSF and its grant programs account for a not insignificant part of this $7M. I make the probably optimistic prediction that in 2010 there will be just over $6M in NSF funds available for AO related non-science work. Thus there has been no significant real increase of public funding for AO development and implementation since the predictions made in 2006. If private funding in the US and the level of ESO AO funding is close to the values predicted in my previous article, then ESO on one observatory, will be outspending all US AO efforts spread over about a dozen observatories by a factor of three.