Top marks for ASTRON

Committee Chair Prof. Lisa Kewley was very pleased with ASTRON’s performance: “Throughout our review process, we were deeply impressed by the dedication and passion exhibited by ASTRON’s team members. Their unwavering commitment to unravelling the mysteries of the universe through cutting-edge research and the development of groundbreaking instrumentation is a testament to the Institute’s enduring legacy.” Prof. Kewley also highlighted ASTRON’s high societal relevance.

The committee was enthusiastic about ASTRON’s success in its own mission statement: to make discoveries in radio astronomy happen. In spite of a small decrease in the Covid-19 period, ASTRON scientists produced between 150-250 peer reviewed publications, which overall have a remarkably high quality. According to the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) in Leiden, ASTRON staff publications achieved a 43% higher impact than average in the field.

Astronomers working at ASTRON have also been successful in obtaining personal grants: 2 ERC Starting grants, 2 ERC Advanced grants, 2 Veni personal grants, 1 Vidi grant, and 2 Vici grants.

Our institution is also involved in larger projects (e.g., Horizon Europe, National Science Agenda/NWA, FP7), and individual ASTRON scientists have been granted several awards and often take part in international networks, conferences, workshops and collaborations.

More importantly, ASTRON has produced research and publications that have clearly contributed to scientific development and have fostered new insights, such as the detection of aurorae on a red dwarf (an important step towards using radio observations to discover habitable exoplanets), and the detection of fast radio bursts, a relatively newly discovered phenomenon that still has astronomers wondering about its origins.

According to the review committee these and other contributions to science demonstrate that ASTRON “actively contributes to breakthrough insights and technology in astronomy.”

LOFAR ERIC, the radio telescope that ASTRON is performing most of its research with, is currently the largest and highest-resolution radio telescope at the lowest frequencies on the planet. While starting out as a national project, LOFAR quickly became a pan-European effort, which is continuing to grow: new stations are being planned in Italy and Bulgaria. Due to the span of the stations, LOFAR ERIC has unprecedented space-telescope-like resolution at metre wavelengths. In the current era, LOFAR has led or complemented science also performed by other low-frequency arrays, such as the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), Long Wavelength Array (LWA), and the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT). In almost all cases, LOFAR outperforms these other instruments in sensitivity or resolution at the corresponding frequencies.

With the upcoming development of SKA, LOFAR ERIC will continue to be updated and will keep producing scientific data. Since LOFAR ERIC can operate at lower frequencies than available with SKA-Low and will have a higher resolution at overlapping frequencies, the telescopes will not compete with one another, but rather complement one another.

The need from the scientific community for LOFAR ERIC is reflected in the number of subscriptions for all research proposal cycles, with factor of two and more oversubscriptions. The review committee concludes that between 2017 and 2022 LOFAR ERIC “has been a crucial facility in developing radio astronomy over the past period, and that it will remain of high importance in the future.”

The committee is also impressed with ASTRON’s (contributions to the) development of technology and innovations in astronomy, done by the I&S department. They specifically mention the development of a Tensor Core GPU Correlator – a correlator GPU library that explores novel technologies for correlating signals five to ten times faster and more energy efficiently than existing GPU designs, and algorithmic improvements in the field of data acquisition and reduction.

Two other developments are specifically mentioned. The first is the successful implementation of TMSS, the newly developed Telescope Manager Specification System, used to specify and (dynamically) schedule LOFAR observations, improving the efficiency of the instrument and its operations by adding new functionalities and a higher level of automation. The other is a custom and novel liquid cooling design made in-house, which dissipates the considerable amount of heat that the electronic components on the board generate. “The committee applauds this type of innovation, which is important not only for radio astronomy itself, but also for related fields of technology and engineering.”

The committee states that “ASTRON is a world-leading institute in the field of astronomy and produces excellent research both on astronomy and in technology and innovations.”

Apart from scientific and technological relevance, ASTRON also has a clear societal relevance. Example of that are ASTRON’s contribution to the development of a European space weather portal, which is currently being developed as part of the Space Situational Awareness program led by ESA (typical end users include satellite operators, radio communication and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) users, military, aircraft operators, and electric power operators), and DISTURB (currently under development), a warning system for solar eruptions, which can have a negative impact on high frequency radio communication and GPS navigation, and that can also disrupt electric power grids or can corrode oil and gas pipelines. This makes a reliable warning system for such eruptions of vital importance.

Currently, ASTRON works with local stakeholders on the production of new hardware for its extension of LOFAR with new stations, and for the upgrading of LOFAR (LOFAR2.0). In addition, the development of SKA comes with an expected fair work return for Dutch industry through production orders (€ 9.64 million). In order to gain these contracts, ASTRON invested in a multi-year intensive preparatory phase with Dutch industrial partners.

Another example of the societal relevance of ASTRON’s instruments, is the usage of the WSRT to support the EU’s Global Navigation Satellite System through performance measurements for the Galileo system, the European counterpart of the US GPS system.

Since its inception, ASTRON has been heavily involved in the SKA project. The Netherlands are one of the founding members of the SKA Organisation, a precursor to the SKA Observatory in charge of delivering the SKA telescope designs. In the next decade, ASTRON will compete with well-funded SKA member countries for telescope access, and thus, scientific return.

ASTRON expects to play a leading role in helping to commission the array and to extract the first science results. Especially from SKA-Low, considering ASTRON’s expertise in low frequency operations gained with LOFAR.

Currently, approximately 26% of the workforce in the organization are women, with the highest proportion of women in the administrative and business departments (average of 42%), while A&O and I&S departments average around 22% and 11%, respectively. Furthermore, around 73% of the staff is Dutch, 18% comes from other European countries, and 6% from international locations beyond Europe. One of the aims of ASTRON’s next five-year strategy is to improve diversity in its current workforce. Part of that are the already (partly) implemented equitable hiring practices.

All in all, the committee argues that ASTRON and its management are on the right track to ensure that the institute can continue flourishing in future. It also argues that ASTRON deserves support from the wider Dutch radio astronomy community, and from the Dutch scientific community at large, “to maintain its scientific excellence and make the necessary changes as described in its strategy. ASTRON should be given the resources and the support to continue playing a role at the forefront of radio astronomy worldwide.”