By Locke Spencer, Doug Johnstone, David Naylor

There has been a lot of PRIMA activity since the March 2026 update.

A PRIMA phase A mission review site visit was held in Pasadena, California at NASA/JPL on 13 May 2026. Locke Spencer and Fred Grandmont attended as representatives of Canada and Canadian Industry, respectively. Canadian flight hardware was one of 5 physical demonstrations on display at JPL for the site visit, and the Canadian contribution was mentioned specifically in the PI closing remarks. As is the case for Phase A mission reviews, there was a written correspondence window of several weeks between the review panel and the PRIMA team surrounding the sight visit on a variety of matters related to the mission concept study report under review. The window for additional technical questions is now closed. There next and final step on the PRIMA selection path is an administrative debriefing at the end of July, with a NASA decision on PRIMA expected in Q4 of 2026. If selected, PRIMA phase B would start in Q1 of 2027.

Since the May JPL site visit, PRIMA featured prominently in the June AAS meeting (also in Pasadena) and it was great to speak about PRIMA with the community at CASCA 2026 in Montreal last week. A PRIMA update was presented to the JCSA just before CASCA on June 5, 2026.

Bespoke Canadian hardware has been part of the PRIMA probe instrumentation since its conception. Within Canada, while we wait on a NASA launch decision for PRIMA, we remain at a decision point where the Canadian FTS hardware may be purchased by NASA directly (with no science return to the Canadian astronomy community), or the CSA could support an official Canadian contribution (with science return to the Canadian community).

We ask for the strongest support for PRIMA from the Canadian Astronomy community and from the CSA to realize this unique opportunity. Interested CASCA and community members can find additional details at the PRIMA webpage, by checking out upcoming and archived virtual sessions from the monthly PRIMA talk series, and by joining the Canadian Far-Infrared Space Astronomy mailing list. We will look to organize a virtual event for the Canadian astronomy community in the coming months.

Canadian participation in a far-infrared space astronomy mission is one of the key recommendations in both the CASCA LRP and CSA CSEW reports. November 2025 saw the release of the PRIMA General Observer (GO) Science book volume 2 by the PRIMA science team, containing 120 unique GO science cases for the PRIMA mission. This is a follow-up to the volume 1 PRIMA GO release containing 76 cases. There was also a dedicated PRIMA issue of JATIS published in late 2025 with 38 papers, including a PRIMA Mission Concept Overview (Glenn et al. 2025). There are also many Canadian connections and collaborations within the released GO books.

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