Astronomers are constantly looking into the past. No matter where you look out into space you are seeing things as they were minutes, hours or millions of years ago. Even at 186,000 miles per second, it takes eight minutes for light to reach us from the Sun. It takes four and a half years for light to reach us from the next nearest star, and millions or billions of years to reach us from other galaxies. So astronomers spend a great deal of time looking into the past.

But astronomers also have to look forward, and make predictions about the future. In order to keep astronomical research pushing at the forefront of our knowledge, astronomers need to predict what new areas of research and technology will help answer the pressing science questions of the next decade, and how much it will cost to build the telescopes, spacecraft and experiments needed to unlock the secrets of our Universe. And since it is impossible to pay for everything, someone has to prioritize which projects will get the biggest bang for the bucks in the coming decade. Continue Reading