It’s time to give NASA an astrophysics nervous system

The most tragic event in modern astronomy isn’t a funding cut or a launch failure. It is a “missed connection.”

Right now, a neutron star collision somewhere in the distant universe is blasting out a short gamma-ray burst. In seconds, that signal will fade. In minutes, the afterglow will vanish. While a few elite robotic networks may catch the flash, the vast majority of the world’s observing capacity remains disconnected, waiting for a human to wake up, evaluate the alert and manually authorize a trigger. By the time the decision is made, the physics are often lost forever.

We are about to drown in these missed connections. With the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s “First Light” and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launching next year, we are entering a new era of Time-Domain and Multi-Messenger (TDAMM) astronomy. This discipline captures the universe in motion, combining observations of light with “messengers” like gravitational waves and neutrinos to watch cosmic cataclysms unfold in real time. Recognizing this transformative potential, the 2020 Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics identified TDAMM as a top-priority sustained activity for the coming decade. 

These new observatories will not just whisper findings; they will roar, detecting a multitude of transient events every day. Yet, as we approach this data tsunami, the fiscal reality is sobering. The FY2026 budget request for NASA Science is effectively cut in half, with inflation eroding purchasing power on top of that. Hard choices are already being made — venerable workhorses like Chandra are facing “close-out” scenarios not because they are broken, but because we simply cannot afford the fuel to keep the lights on while building the next flagship.

We are trying to drink from a firehose with a teacup, and we are out of money to buy a bigger cup.

There is a way out of this trap, but it requires a fundamental shift in how NASA thinks about astrophysics procurement. It is time to stop buying hardware and start subscribing to outcomes. It is time to implement “TDAMM as a Service.”

The ‘Athena’ mandate

For decades, NASA’s model has been “CapEx” (Capital Expenditure). We identify a science opportunity, pay a contractor $500 million to build a bespoke satellite, launch it and own it for 20+ years. This builds “castles” — magnificent, custom and incredibly slow to deploy.

The TDAMM era, however, doesn’t need castles. It needs a fully connected nervous system linking all the required sensors.

The appetite for this shift has reached the highest levels of agency leadership. Jared Isaacman, the nominee for NASA Administrator, has already signaled a willingness to break the old molds. His Project Athena manifesto explicitly championed a “Science as a Service” philosophy, arguing that the agency must pivot from building hardware to buying data wherever possible to act as a force multiplier for discovery.

As reported, Isaacman’s initial focus seems to be on Earth science and lunar missions. However, the logic applies even more urgently to astrophysics. We should adopt this Athena mindset to build a true fully connected astrophysical nervous system. Instead of, say, buying a new X-ray telescope to chase Rubin’s alerts, NASA should issue a “Data Buy” contract — similar to the Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition program. NASA defines the spectral bands and latency (“Get me X-Ray data with xyz parameters within 60 seconds”), and commercial vendors bid to provide the stream, not the satellite.

This moves the facility cost from CapEx to OpEx (Operational Expenditure). Vendor A might meet the need by launching a swarm of cubesats. Vendor B might put a hosted payload on a commercial comms satellite in Geostationary orbit. NASA doesn’t care how they do it; NASA only pays for the valid data packets that flow through the nervous system.

The ‘shutter-less’ observatory

This model extends beyond just space assets. It must revolutionize the ground game too. While robotic telescopes exist today, they operate largely as isolated nodes. A TDAMM as a Service model would see NASA and the NSF funding a “Tasking-as-a-Service” layer to connect them.

The agencies could hold a centralized “Debit Card” for rapid response. When a LIGO high-priority gravitational wave alert hits the stream, a cloud-based decision engine (like the open-source TOM Toolkit) instantly evaluates the visibility and “buys” a 15-minute override on a global network of commercial and academic telescopes. The system handles the handshake, the shutter opens and the data is captured — all before a human observer has even poured their coffee.

The risk of doing nothing

The situation is urgent. Our current sentinels, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory (launched 2004) and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (launched 2008), are aging gracefully but are years past their design lives. While they remain scientifically productive, their eventual demise is a matter of old age, not policy.

If these sentinels go dark before a replacement architecture is in place, the Rubin Observatory and LIGO will be shouting into the void. We will detect the gravitational waves of a collision but have no X-ray and Gamma-Ray eyes to pinpoint the explosion. We will have the world’s most expensive telescopes — Webb and Hubble — blindly staring at empty space because we lacked the agile, cheap, wide-field monitors to tell them where to look.

Critics will argue that commercial data can’t match the exquisite capabilities of a bespoke mission. They are right — and they are missing the point. We do not need over-designed and costly missions that take years to be developed, and leave capability gaps when they end. We need continuous coverage now and into the coming decades. 

The technology exists. The cloud infrastructure exists. The commercial space sector is hungry for anchor tenants. And now, the political will may soon exist in the Administrator’s suite. All that is missing is the procurement vehicle.

To gauge interest in this approach NASA’s Astrophysics Division should release a Request for Information to industry, soliciting ideas for a “TDAMM as a Data Service.” The universe is calling; we need a nervous system fast and capable enough to pick up the phone.

Nicholas E. White, Ph.D., is a research professor of physics at George Washington University and owner of Space Science Solutions LLC. He previously served as Director of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where he shaped strategies for flagship and Explorer missions, including the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and the Roman Space Telescope.

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