The United States National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced the award of a $12.7M grant to architect and design a next-generation Event Horizon Telescope (ngEHT). The principal investigator of this program is the EHT Founding Director, Sheperd Doeleman at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. The ngEHT will sharpen our focus on black holes, and let researchers move from still-imagery to real-time videos of space-time at the event horizon.
The new award is aimed at solving the formidable technical and algorithmic challenges required to significantly expand the capability of the EHT. The first M87 black hole images were made using the technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), in which an array of radio dishes around the world is combined to form an Earth-sized virtual telescope. By exploring new dish designs and locations, the ngEHT effort will plan the architecture for a new array with roughly double the number of sites worldwide.
Further information: announcement from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, NSF MSRI Award Abstract