[photo credit: NASA]
The Community Science (Ad ASTRA) Workshop, held in conjunction with NASA’s Astrophysics Strategic Technology and Research Accelerator initiative, meets in Baxter Lecture Hall on the Caltech campus, running from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 3. NASA’s Astrophysics Division organized it with the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech, known as IPAC, to gather community input on which future large, strategic astrophysics missions the agency should consider. Two of Thursday’s speakers work in Pasadena, at an institution that founded and manages NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the agency.
Francesca Civano of the Physics of the Cosmos Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center opens the morning at 8:30 a.m., with Peter Kurczynski of the Cosmic Origins Program Office at Goddard chairing. Rita Sambruna of Goddard follows at 8:40 a.m. with a talk titled “The Large Mission Studies: What Worked and What Didn’t.” At 9 a.m., Fiona Harrison of Caltech speaks on “Lessons Learned from the Last Decadal,” and at 9:20 a.m. Tiffany Kataria of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory presents on ground- and space-based astronomy in the 2030s and 2040s.
Harrison co-chaired that decadal survey. The National Academies appointed her and Robert Kennicutt Jr. to lead Astro2020, the 20-member steering committee whose report set the field’s priorities for the current decade. She holds the Kent and Joyce Kresa Leadership Chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy at Caltech and is principal investigator of NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array.
After a 40-minute break in Dabney Garden, the program turns to summing up. Ryan Hickox of Dartmouth gives a 15-minute synthesis of the key science questions raised over the three days at 10:20 a.m., and Meredith MacGregor of Johns Hopkins University follows at 10:35 a.m. on the key technology capabilities. Civano chairs that session. An open community discussion then runs 80 minutes, from 10:50 a.m. to 12:10 p.m. — the longest single item on Thursday’s program, and the only one the agenda lists without a named speaker.
Jessica Gaskin, the Astrophysics Division’s associate director for concept and technology development, closes at 12:10 p.m. with a talk titled “Beyond the Selection: The Path Forward.” Unlike the first two days, Thursday schedules no parallel breakout sessions; everything happens in Baxter.
The workshop is not a walk-in event. Participation is limited to professional astronomers, research scientists and other professionals actively engaged in the field, and in-person capacity was set at about 250 people. Both registration routes have closed — in person in mid-August, ahead of the Aug. 15 deadline, once the venue filled, and virtually on Monday, the published deadline. Plenary sessions are broadcast online to registrants who received a separate Zoom webinar link by email, and are to be made available after the meeting. The working splinter sessions are in-person only.
According to NASA, the three-day structure is meant to connect scientific priorities with technological readiness and mission implementation, and the outcomes will help the agency prioritize mission concepts and shape what it describes as a balanced, forward-looking astrophysics portfolio.
The meeting sits inside that initiative, known as ASTRA, which the Astrophysics Division announced in April. NASA says ASTRA is intended to identify strategic flagship and probe mission concepts, study them at a low fidelity level to inform strategic decisions, and advance them ahead of the formal pre-Phase A work that precedes a project, with the aim of reducing cost, schedule risk and time-to-science. The agency says the concepts in question are large strategic missions costing more than $1 billion. NASA’s three astrophysics program analysis groups have been asked to jointly report up to six community-prioritized concepts — beyond the X-ray and far-infrared flagship concepts Astro2020 already recommended — to the Astrophysics Division director for consideration.
The meeting closes four days after NASA launched the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which lifted off at 7:26 a.m. Eastern time Sunday from Kennedy Space Center and is now on a three-month trip to its final orbit.
What Thursday produces does not stop in Baxter. The analysis groups are charged to contribute to a joint presentation following the workshop and to comment on all ASTRA mission concepts under consideration, and NASA has said a presentation summarizing the workshop’s findings will go to the community by the end of the year.
