With ELT's constructions just a few years away ESO open the discussion of what will be the next major facility that is intended to revolutionize the astronomical landscape. This is a formidable task as we can only make educated guess of the technological tools available and the challenging astrophysical questions that will be faced in the timescale of such a next generation facility.

 

Just as an example, in the 2040+ horizon we could have LISA and ET capable of churning out a flow of potential GW counterparts that is unimaginable today; our inventory of exoplanets will be enriched with thousands of targets that are currently unknown, our knowledge of dark matter and cosmology could be very different from the current ones.

 

Will energy dependents detectors or adaptive optics correctors be matured enough to make current design of spectrographs and atmospheric compensation systems made obsolete the ones we have built so far?

 

And how much risk we want to take into account to design a new facility based on scientific assumptions or technological promises today only available as rough sketches?

We hence want to urge the Italian astronomical community to answer the following questions:

• What will be the strategic observational needs from the ground that will be possible only with the construction of a new European facility?
• How do the different options already circulated in the European context, such as WST and others, compare with each other?
• What technological development can be credible and realistic in the time scale of this project?
• What are the directions, even multiple, in which our community, and INAF in particular, want to push.