Open Digital Infrastructure In Astrophysics

In astronomy, financial support for maintaining existing digital infrastructure is generally much harder to secure than funding for developing new digital infrastructures that promise new science. Sustaining astronomy’s digital infrastructure is a new topic for many, the sustainability challenges are not always widely known, and sometimes even formulating answerable questions can be formidable:

• What is the relationship between money and sustainability for community-driven, open- knowledge software instruments that enable transformative research in stellar astrophysics?

• At what points in a software instrument’s lifecycle does an injection of financial resources help or hurt?

• Are science driven software instruments sustainable for the long term, say the next 40 years?

In the project’s report, 17 software projects cover questions on science capability, developer model, target community, bibliometrics, funding profile, and sustainability efforts.