National Academy: Dark Energy First, Maybe LISA Second

The National Academy of Sciences panel charged with evaluating the Beyond Einstein program has come out with its recommendations. Briefly: the first priority should be the Joint Dark Energy Mission (where "joint" means "with the Department of Energy"), but we should keep up some amount of work on LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. Steinn has the lowdown, so you should go there for details. I am happy to know that JDEM will go forward (if NASA listens to the panel, about which I'm less sure than Steinn seems to be); very happy that LISA gets at least some support, although if I were the European Space Agency I'd certainly be shopping around for more reliable partners; slightly bemused that little effort seemed to go into pushing a CMB probe; and very sad to see X-ray astronomy get the shaft, as Constellation-X and EXIST seem right out of the picture. We can only hope for happier times ahead.