Looking back on the 2000-2010 Decadal Survey

In 1999, the US National Academy published a survey of what big astronomical projects ought to be done in 2000-2010 (you may have to go to http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309070317 and register to download).

They brought out an equivalent for 2010-2020 recently, so I thought I might as well look back and see what got done of the 2000-2010 one.

Ongoing program (IE recommendations of the 1990-2000 process)

• Space Infra-Red Telescope Facility: yes, Spitzer was launched in August 2003 and has done pretty fantastic things
  
• Millimetre Array: project merged with others to give the Atacama Large Millimetre Array, and that's on track to produce the first science observations in the second half of this year. So: success, but a bit late
  
• Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy: this one's been perennially delayed, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory that it replaces had last flown fifteen years before SOFIA finally managed first light at the start of December 2010. I wonder slightly what the Herschel equivalent of the mid-infrared frame in the first-light shot of M42 would look like; I don't know enough about fields of view to see if that would be feasible.
  
• Astrometric Interferometry Mission: no sign of it yet, and the SIM that it turned into was fairly formally cancelled in 2010. It's been through several changes of name and goal, and increased precision of (much cheaper) ground-based radial-velocity and (somewhat cheaper) space-based transit searches for planets mean that its raison d'être is rather eroded. ESA's Gaia, which will do astrometry but not interferometrically, does seem to be underway; SIM may make more sense after Gaia.
  
• Microwave anisotropy probes: NASA's WMAP and ESA's Planck both launched and produced interesting if not unexpected results.
  

Major New Initiatives

• Next Generation Space Telescope. Well, the program is carrying on, it's enormously over its rather optimistic budget and looks to be about five years behind schedule, but I suspect that if I do this again in 2021 everyone will immediately know of some impressive NGST images.
  
• Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope - a 30-metre ground-based telescope. This is now called the Thirty Metre Telescope, after a merger with Canadian and Californian projects to do the same thing; they've picked a site on Mauna Kea and plan first light in 2018, though no segments have been procured yet and the devices for keeping the segments aligned aren't fully developed.
  
• Constellation-X space-based X-ray telescope. Like the Millimetre Array, this ended up merged with equivalent projects by Europe and Japan to give the International X-Ray Observatory, which seems to be in contention to be awarded funding in 2013.
  
• Expanded Very Large Array - receiver upgrade for the VLA; currently underway, should be ready in 2012.
  
• Large-Aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope. This project ended up with a lot of funding from Google, it's now at the stage of casting the mirror, but apparently there's a bit of a delay because the grinding machine ground the first mirror rather too enthusiastically.
  
• Terrestrial Planet Finder - essentially a successor to SIM, this would be a big space-based interferometer capable of imaging Earth-sized planets. Cancelled 2010 along with SIM.
  
• Single Aperture Far Infrared Observatory - successor to NGST, this was supposed to be an eight-metre monolithic-mirror telescope. Since the only proposed launch vehicle that it could fit in was cancelled a couple of years ago, I imagine the project is dead.
  

Things In Space

• Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope: yes, it's now called Fermi, it launched June 11 2008 and has been surveying the gamma-ray sky ever since.
  
• Laser Interferometer Space Antenna: this is a rather optimistic project (it requires three telescopes to fly in formation ten million kilometres apart), it's been taken over by ESA and is another of the competitors for 2013.
  
• Solar Dynamics Observer: yes, launched February 11 2010, working successfully, I even know one of the people (ellarien) analysing data from it
  
• Energetic X-Ray Imaging Survey Telescope: the idea was to survey the whole hard-X-ray sky several times a day. Nothing really came of this, and it wasn't mentioned in the 2010 survey.
  
• Advanced Radio Interferometry between Space and Earth: launch a largish radio telescope into a far Earth orbit. Nothing seems to have come of this, though there are vague Russian and well-developed Japanese projects to do this.