Where does LSST rank among the many proposed national scientific facilities?
Over the past decade six national reports have ranked LSST highly. This is because LSST is uniquely capable of attacking some of the greatest mysteries in astronomy and physics. National committees studying options for the next generation facility have recommended LSST for its capability to study many fundamental questions in astronomy and physics all at the same time. Rather than building separate facilities to study near-Earth asteroids, or the outer solar system, or how our galaxy was formed, or the nature of energetic explosions in the universe, or the mysterious dark matter and dark energy, LSST has a sufficient light grasp (throughput) to undertake all these scientific programs simultaneously from the same Wide-Fast-Deep survey.
