Washington

Search across space: Constellation-X will spearhead NASA's programme to study black holes. Credit: NASA

NASA is making preliminary plans for a multibillion-dollar programme to study black holes, dark matter and other cosmic exotica from spaceborne observatories.

Called 'Beyond Einstein', the initiative would be modelled on the agency's Origins programme, which focuses on galaxy and planet formation and the search for life in the Universe.

Like Origins and 'Living With a Star', which covers solar–terrestrial physics, Beyond Einstein is being designed as a coherent framework that would provide a rationale for the support of its scientific field over many years. It would include large space-based observatories, smaller 'Einstein Probes', costing up to $500 million each, plus funding for further scientific research and technological development. The plan is set out in a soon- to-be-published 25-year strategic roadmap written by scientific advisers to NASA's existing Structure and Evolution of the Universe (SEU) programme.

NASA could request fresh funding for the initiative as early as the 2005 fiscal year, according to Anne Kinney, director of the agency's astronomy and physics division. She told an SEU advisory committee in Washington on 3 December that Beyond Einstein is NASA chief scientist Ed Weiler's highest-priority new initiative. If approved by the White House and Congress, the programme would probably be funded at a similar level to Origins — several hundred million dollars a year.

Beyond Einstein would build on the work of current spacecraft to address three main research questions: what powered the initial inflation of the Universe following the Big Bang, what happens at the edge of a black hole, and what is dark energy?

The authors of the SEU roadmap, led by Sterl Phinney, a theoretical astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology, considered two recent National Academy of Sciences reports in shaping their plan: a decadal review of priorities for astronomy missions, and another report on the interface between astronomy and physics (see Nature 416, 775; 200210.1038/419877a).

The roadmap's top two recommendations for 'Einstein Great Observatories' were also ranked highly in the decadal review. These are the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), a European–US space-based array designed to detect gravitational waves, and Constellation-X, a cluster of X-ray telescopes that would conduct high-resolution spectroscopy of energetic objects, including black holes.

The smaller, more focused Einstein Probes would be proposed and managed by scientists outside NASA, and would be launched every three to four years. The first three candidate missions cited in the roadmap are a Dark Energy Probe, an Inflation Probe to study the remnant radiation from the Big Bang, and a Black Hole Finder Probe.

Agency scientists and roadmap team members have already begun briefing Washington policy-makers on the plan, which would need funding beyond NASA's current $3.6-billion annual budget for space science. All are well aware of the need to sell the new initiative. Public communication is “absolutely critical to winning support for Beyond Einstein”, Kinney told the advisory meeting.

But space scientists are confident that the programme can deliver both cutting-edge science and ample public enthusiasm. “These are sexy topics,” says Rocky Kolb, an astrophysicist at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, who chairs the SEU subcommittee.