Margaret Meixner
JPL/Caltech
Building on SOFIA’s legacy, future far-infrared astronomy opportunities
The interstellar medium emits a tremendous amount of radiation in the infrared (3 to 500 $\mu m$) that represents the majority of the light emitted by a galaxy. The Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA, Special issue articles, 2018) covered this entire wavelength range with 5 instruments including spectrometers, imagers and polarimeters. With the SOFIA mission concluded, the astronomical community is without a far-infrared observatory. In the context of history, I discuss the future of the field in particular the NASA probe opportunity and future flagship plans. Astro2020 Decadal survey recognizes the importance of the far-infrared (far-IR). For the future, they recommend a potential probe and a large IR/far-IR observatory that may cover the wavelength range of 3 to 500 $\mu m$. Three far-IR probe proposals were submitted to NASA: Probe far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics (PRIMA) PI:Glenn; Single Aperture Large Telescope for Universe Studies (SALTUS) PI:Walker; and Far-InfraRed Spectroscopy Space Telescope (FIRSST) PI:Cooray. The probe concepts PRIMA and SALTUS, and the Origins Space Telescope large mission study report (Meixner et al. 2019; 2021) are described.
