Lessons Learned in Decadal Planning in Space Science Summary of a Workshop (2013) / Chapter Skim
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4 Sponsor Agency Perspectives
4 Sponsor Agency Perspectives
Pages 23-32
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From page 23... ...
Moderator: Mark Abbott, Dean, College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University; Chair, Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space; Member, Space Studies Board Panelists: Michael Freilich, Director, NASA Earth Science Division Paul Hertz, Director, NASA Astrophysics Division Lisa May, Mars Program Executive, NASA Planetary Science Division Jeffrey Newmark, Strategic Planning Lead, NASA Heliophysics Division John Pereira, Chief, Advanced Satellite Planning Division, NOAA/NESDIS INTRODUCTORY REMARKS The moderator, Mark Abbott, opened the session by noting that a major contemporary challenge for surveys is to be useful in today's constrained budget environment in which "flat is the new normal." He posed four questions for the panelists who represented federal agency customers for decadal surveys: • How do you interpret and use decadal surveys? • What works well and what does not work well?
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From page 24... ...
She also agreed that there is a need to avoid having survey committees get into too much detail with the CATE process. Asking for more detail about a mission concept that is not mature does not, in May's opinion, make it any better defined.
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Pereira offered three recommendations for future surveys: • Determine the principal agency organizations that will receive the recommendations and define the scope of their responsibilities before the survey starts; • Aim to make survey reports available in time to be used at the beginning of the annual federal budget cycle; and • Recognize that cost estimates in survey reports generate expectations; the cost data take on lives of their own and can lead to later misunderstanding if they are not properly caveated. PANEL DISCUSSION During their discussion, the moderator and panelists talked about their experience with and opinions on the following: • Managing the decadal survey-NASA relationship, • Decadal survey ground rules and preparatory activities, 1 Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences.
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From page 26... ...
However, she cautions, future decadal surveys being overly prescriptive, which can undermine the community's -- and NASA's -- ability to come up with novel ways of overcoming programmatic challenges during a survey's implementation, to which Jeffery Newmark agreed. Decadal Survey Ground Rules and Preparatory Activities Moderator Mark Abbott asked the panelists if there could be common ground rules across the four science divisions at NASA regarding the decadal survey.
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From page 27... ...
Continuity and Synergy Across Mission Portfolio All of the disciplines, particularly Earth science and solar and space physics, have to deal with dependencies on missions and measurements and are always at risk of losing those. Mark Abbott asked if the decadal surveys should look at integrated scenarios that would help NASA craft an integrated Earth and space science portfolio, as well as feasible decision rules.
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From page 28... ...
Cost and Technical Evaluation Mark Abbott noted that science priorities are heavily influence by technical and fiscal feasibility, so even the highest-priority science can be demoted to a lower priority if it requires a prohibitively expensive mission or non-existent technology. Another issue that arose in past decadal surveys, he said, is that in the mission design process, cost and schedule become features rather than drivers, making it difficult to relax requirements to meet science objectives.
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From page 29... ...
Topics discussed included the following: • Role of the decadal surveys in interagency planning, • Tension between science and missions, • CATE process, • Intra-/interagency cooperation, • Decadal survey implementation, and • Decadal survey preparatory activities. Role of the Decadal Surveys in Interagency Planning An audience member asked the panelists what the role of the decadal survey is and what it can do for an agency that is not primarily driven by science priorities like NASA.
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From page 30... ...
He suggested that the next round of decadal surveys take into account what the CATE numbers are actually going to be used for. For example, the 2011 planetary science decadal survey did not exclude mission concepts for the New Frontiers program just because they were slightly above the $1 billion cost-cap of that program and used the CATE process to come up with novel ways of turning a $1.3 billion mission into a $1 billion or less mission.
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From page 31... ...
Identifying those gaps would help the next decadal survey come up with goals or means for closing those gaps; even though the 2013 solar and space physics likely tried to do that, NASA can certainly help that effort by doing this activity in advance of the survey. John Pereira said that future decadal surveys, at least in Earth science and applications from space, should take into better account commercial industry capabilities for meeting some of the science and/or mission goals of the decadal survey.
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From page 32... ...
Lisa May -- noting the different ways astronomy and planetary science handled their mission solicitation processes before and during their decadal surveys -- said that more investigation is needed to find the balance between having NASA science divisions solicit mission studies from the community at large prior to a decadal survey versus the decadal survey committees sending mission concepts to NASA centers for on-demand studies. Hertz said that the peer review process for his division's ROSES solicitation that occurred before the 2010 astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey served as a proxy for the community and did not amount to NASA pre-selecting missions on its own.
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