RCSA Played Founding Role in Creation of the LSST
Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/H. Stockebrand photo
Research Corporation for Science Advancement played a foundational role in the birth of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the astronomical facility nearing completion on the Cerro Pachón ridge in Chile that aims to answer some of scientists' biggest questions about the Universe with its upcoming 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).
Led by former RCSA president John Schaefer, RCSA organized and drove the project from its inception through its formative stages.
“RCSA was the ‘angel investor’ who helped incubate this project for its first few years,” said Danny Gasch, RCSA’s Vice President & CFO, who also served as Treasurer of the LSST Corporation from its start in 2003 to 2006.
With an up-front multimillion dollar pledge toward the project, RCSA provided early financial and business support to launch the telescope's construction, including the design and construction of its primary mirror starting in 2007.
The project was envisioned in the late 1990s as the first digital sky surveys began to show promise of replacing photographic surveys.
The 2000 Decadal Survey of astronomy conducted by the National Academy of Sciences, “Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium,” recommended a "Large-Aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope" as a major initiative. The report described a world-class instrument that could survey the entire visible sky every three nights, generating an unprecedented database of information about the universe, and called such an instrument one of the two highest priorities for future ground-based telescope facilities. It recommended that the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy provide two-thirds of its construction costs and operating budget for 10 years.
Schaefer understood that before federal funding could ever be secured, early-stage private funding would be necessary to kick-start basic research to prove the concept and to begin manufacturing parts of the telescope.
“The NSF and DOE have their funding processes, and it’s a competitive appropriation scenario,” Schaefer had said. “It’s likely to take two, three, four years before a strong commitment is made, and that’s time wasted in terms of development of the telescope.”
To that end, RCSA helped establish the LSST Corporation in 2003 as an independent nonprofit organization to catalyze the observatory project. RCSA was among four founding members of the organization, headquartered in Tucson. (The others were the University of Arizona, the University of Washington, and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory.)
Schaefer retired as president of RCSA in 2004 and served as LSSTC Board Chair and President from 2003 to 2012. As a nonprofit, the LSSTC managed the collaboration of more than 100 scientists and engineers to design and develop what was then called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, as well as to raise funds for its construction.
In early 2005, the LSSTC (with substantial support from RCSA as well as a $250,000 donation from Arizona businessman Richard Caris) boosted the LSST from the drawing board into production by awarding a $2.3 million contract to the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory Mirror Lab (now called the Richard F. Caris Mirror Laboratory) to purchase the glass and begin engineering work for the telescope’s main 8.4 meter mirror. That contract covered the first of an expected four phases to design, cast, polish, and integrate the mirror into its support cell.
Late in 2005, the LSST project received the first year of a four-year, $14.2 million award from the NSF, allowing engineers and scientists to complete design work. Fabrication of the major mirror components got underway, thanks to millions of dollars in private funding received from the Charles and Lisa Simonyi Foundation for Arts and Sciences, Bill Gates, and other individuals.
Peter Strittmatter, who was Director of Steward Observatory from 1975 to 2012, says RCSA’s impactful role as part of LSSTC was in bringing people together. He said it was clear from the beginning that the LSST was going to be an enormous project that would need involvement from multiple entities, and “getting an organization in that was clearly for the good of science was terrific from my point of view.”
He said getting the work started before it became a national priority was critical. “Research Corporation’s support enabled the national funding,” he said.
Funding from the NSF and DOE began shortly after the telescope was prioritized again in the 2010 Decadal Survey. While the LSSTC had originally managed the LSST project, management was then assumed by NSF NOIRLab, formerly NOAO. RCSA ended its direct involvement with the project, and the LSSTC became an affiliated organization to raise funds both domestically and internationally, changing its name in August 2023 to the LSST Discovery Alliance. It is now a coalition of dozens of institutional members invested in maximizing science and community building with the LSST.
All told, RCSA contributed about $4 million to LSST operations before NSF or DOE funding began. This support included operations funding from 2005-2007, hosting office space for LSST personnel from 2003-2007, and donating glass worth $400,000 (which RCSA had purchased for a previously supported project, the Large Binocular Telescope) for the primary mirror. Today, RCSA focuses on catalytic funding for research rather than for operational activities.
RCSA was a dues-paying member of the LSSTC for 13 years. In addition, RCSA's Director of Finance and Human Resources, Jennifer Brown, has served on the LSST Discovery Alliance’s Audit & Finance Committee since 2022.
Financial support for Rubin Observatory, which officially began construction in 2015, now comes from the NSF, the DOE Office of Science, and private funding raised by the LSST Discovery Alliance. The NSF-funded Rubin Observatory Project Office for Construction was established as an operating center under management of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). The DOE-funded effort to build the Rubin Observatory LSST Camera is managed by the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. An act of Congress in late 2019 changed the telescope’s name from the LSST to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
As scientists prepare to analyze data from the Legacy Survey of Space and Time starting in late 2024, RCSA’s support has come full circle.
In November 2024, RCSA will launch a new Scialog, Early Science with the LSST, which aims to help unlock the full scientific potential of the dataset by providing seed funding to ignite early LSST discoveries, and by creating the cross-disciplinary connections required to tackle the biggest questions LSST is poised to address.
The initiative is co-sponsored by RCSA and the Heising-Simons Foundation, with additional support from The Brinson Foundation and Leinweber Foundation.
