The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) started operations in New Mexico on May 6, 2021, and was complemented with a twin instrument at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile, in March 2017. Since then, the two instruments have pierced the Milky Way using infrared light from cool stars to create a chemical 3D map of the Galaxy that is bringing a new understanding of how galaxies assemble and evolve. APOGEE ​ has transformed the field of Galactic Archaeology, by analyzing the light from hundreds of stars in a single pointing, providing millions of high-resolution stellar spectra in just 15 years—a several orders of magnitude improvement over previous databases, and processing these data with physical models of the atmospheres of stars to derive accurate stellar velocities and precision chemical abundances for 20 chemical elements.
This meeting celebrates the 15th anniversary of APOGEE’s first light and the enormous, uniform, high-quality dataset it has produced. It also provides a timely opportunity to recognize Steve Majewski’s 65th birthday and his leadership of APOGEE during the third and fourth phases of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We will review the survey’s most impactful results, reflect on the still largely untapped potential of the existing database, discuss the hardware, software, and modeling developments needed to further improve precision and accuracy, and explore prospects for new observations from SDSS-V and beyond.