Canada’s Long Range Plan for astronomy identified participation in a 30-m class telescope, such as the Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT), as the top priority for ground-based infrastructure. With a primary mirror area about ten times larger than the largest telescopes that exist today, these facilities will provide the most transformational leap in capability that has been seen for decades. With an advanced adaptive optics system (being designed and built in Canada), TMT will provide an improvement in sensitivity of up to a factor 100 for some applications. Among the many exciting science applications is the possibility to detect biosignatures on extrasolar planets.
Following the release of the US Decadal survey in 2021, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) is considering a proposal to join as a major (>25%) partner in both TMT and a smaller, southern telescope, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). In early 2023 the NSF completed a thorough Preliminary Design Review of the project. The images above are actual renderings of the current design presented at that review. Canada has been a major partner in this project since 2003, with a $243M federal contribution announced in 2014. WCA member Michael Balogh is the Chair of the CASCA/ACURA TMT Advisory committee, and a member of the science team for one of the first-light TMT instruments, the Wide Field Optical Spectrograph (WFOS). The innovative design of this instrument will make it the most sensitive spectrograph ever built. First light for the TMT is now anticipated for the early-mid 2030s.