Space Studies Board Annual Report 2014 (2015)

3
Ad Hoc Study Committees:
Activities and Membership

When a sponsor requests that the National Research Council (NRC) conduct a study, an ad hoc committee is established for that purpose. The committee terminates when the study is completed. These study committees are subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, Section 15, because they provide advice and recommendations to the federal government. The Space Studies Board (SSB) and/or one of its standing committees provide oversight for ad hoc study committee activities. Six ad hoc study committees were active during 2014; their activities and membership are summarized below. The SSB collaborated on one study with the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB), two studies with the Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA), and one study with the Committee on National Statistics of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education.

ASSESSMENT OF THE ASTROPHYSICS FOCUSED TELESCOPE ASSETS (AFTA) MISSION CONCEPTS

The ad hoc Committee for an Assessment of the Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets (AFTA) Mission Concepts held its first and only in-person meeting January 12-14, 2014, at the Keck Center of the National Academies in Washington, D.C. The study was requested by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) in order to assess whether NASA’s proposed Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets (AFTA) design reference mission described in the April 30, 2013, report of the AFTA Science Definition Team, WFIRST-2.4, is responsive to the overall strategy to pursue the science objectives of the 2010 report of the astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey, New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics (NWNH), and in particular, the survey’s top-ranked, large-scale, space-based priority: the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). At the meeting, committee members heard from representatives of NASA SMD and the Astrophysics Division; the WFIRST/AFTA science definition team; the NASA-led WFIRST/AFTA project team; the Aerospace Corporation, who conducted a technical evaluation of the WFIRST/AFTA concept; and the astronomy and astrophysics community, who spoke about the proposed coronagraph, its scientific capabilities, and associated technical risk. The committee’s report, Evaluation of the Implementation of WFIRST/AFTA in the Context of New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics, was released on March 18, 2014. The report concluded that the AFTA hardware could be used to implement the WFIRST mission with a larger mirror, offering the potential of substantially greater scientific return for the mission than was originally proposed in NWNH. A larger mirror would also enable the inclusion of a coronagraph, which has the potential to advance NWNH objectives for technology development toward a future Earth-like exoplanet imaging mission. However, using the AFTA hardware to implement WFIRST (WFIRST/AFTA) comes with increased cost and technical risks—particularly if the coronagraph is also included in the mission—which is at odds with the programmatic rationale in NWNH for recommending the comparatively lower-risk baseline WFIRST mission.

Membership¹

Fiona A. Harrison, California Institute of Technology (chair)

Marcia J. Rieke, University of Arizona (vice chair)

Roger D. Blandford, Stanford University

Erik L. Burgess, Burgess Consulting, Inc.

John E. Carlstrom, University of Chicago

Megan Donahue, Michigan State University

Timothy M. Heckman, Johns Hopkins University

James Patrick Lloyd, Cornell University

Miguel Morales, University of Washington

Edward L. Wright, University of California, Los Angeles

A. Thomas Young, Lockheed Martin Corporation (retired)

Staff

David B. Lang, Senior Program Officer, BPA

Andrea Rebholz,² Program Coordinator, ASEB

Lewis Groswald, Associate Program Officer, SSB (through June 20)

CONTINUITY OF NASA-SUSTAINED REMOTE SENSING OBSERVATIONS OF THE EARTH FROM SPACE

In 2013, at the request of the NASA’s Earth Science Division, an ad hoc committee was formed with the task of providing a framework to assist in the determination of when measurements or data sets initiated by ESD should be collected for extended periods. The Committee on a Framework for Analyzing the Needs for Continuity of NASA-Sustained Remote Sensing Observations of the Earth from Space held its second in-person meeting from January 29-31, 2014, at the Keck Center in Washington, D.C. The public sessions of the meeting included presentations on essential climate variables (Adrian Simmons, President/Chairman, Global Climate Observing System Steering Committee); the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s perspectives on continuity in Earth remote sensing (Toshiyoshi Kimura, Associate Director for Engineering, Earth Observation Research Center, Satellite Applications Mission Directorate); climate modeling and data continuity (Duane Waliser, Chief Scientist, Earth Science and Technology Directorate, Jet Propulsion Laboratory); and the Canadian Space Agency’s perspective on continuity (Thomas Piekutowski, Program Manager, SunEarth System Sciences, and Stella Melo, Senior Program Scientist).

The committee held its third and fourth in-person meetings on April 23-25, 2014, at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies in Irvine, California, and on June 10-12, 2014, at the Keck Center in Washington, D.C. Both meetings were closed in their entirety and were devoted to developing a draft of the committee’s report. The committee did not meet in person during the third quarter of 2014, but held numerous WebEx teleconferences, all of which were aimed at completing its draft report. The committee’s draft report entered external review in late November 2014; release to the public of an approved prepublication version of the final report is anticipated no earlier than March 31, 2015.

Membership

Byron D. Tapley, University of Texas, Austin (chair)

Michael D. King, University of Colorado, Boulder (vice chair)

Mark R. Abbott, Oregon State University

Steven A. Ackerman, University of Wisconsin, Madison

John J. Bates, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Rafael L. Bras, Georgia Institute of Technology

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¹ All terms ended on April 30, 2014.

² Staff from other NRC boards who are shared with the SSB.

Robert E. Dickinson, University of Texas, Austin

Randall R. Friedl, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Lee-Lueng Fu, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Chelle L. Gentemann, Remote Sensing Systems

Kathryn A. Kelly, University of Washington

Judith L. Lean, Naval Research Laboratory

Joyce E. Penner, University of Michigan

Michael J. Prather, University of California, Irvine

Eric J. Rignot, University of California, Irvine

William L. Smith, Hampton University

Compton J. Tucker, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Bruce A. Wielicki, NASA Langley Research Center

Staff

Arthur A. Charo, Senior Program Officer, SSB

Lewis Groswald, Associate Program Officer, SSB (through June 20)

Anesia Wilks, Senior Program Assistant, SSB

HUMAN SPACEFLIGHT

The ASEB, collaborating with the SSB and the Committee on National Statistics of the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, formed the ad hoc Committee on Human Spaceflight to review the long-term goals, core capabilities, and direction of the U.S. human spaceflight program and make recommendations to enable a sustainable U.S. human spaceflight program. The committee and its supporting panels completed a draft report and submitted it to external peer review in March 2014. The final reviews for the draft report arrived in early May, and the committee completed its work to address the comments of the 19 external experts by the end of that month. Following institutional sign-off, the prepublication report, Pathways to Exploration—Rationales and Approaches for a U.S. Program of Human Space Exploration, was delivered to NASA on May 30 and publicly released on June 4. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and other agency leaders were briefed on June 3 by Committee Co-Chairs Jonathan Lunine and Mitch Daniels and Technical Panel Chair John Sommerer on the report findings. The chairs also provided a joint briefing to staff from the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy on June 3, a separate briefing to Senate and House staffers that afternoon, and a briefing to other House staffers the following day. A well-attended press conference for the report was held on June 4, and the three chairs, along with Public and Stakeholder Opinions Panel Chair Roger Tourangeau, made a presentation to both live and remote audiences and answered questions from both. The report was well received at all of these briefings, and at each, the chairs were extensively questioned about the findings and implications of the report. The report’s release was met by intense interest from both the space press and the general press, and articles quickly appeared in a number of national newspapers, including the Washington Post. Both the chairs and members of the committee have given numerous press and radio interviews to date and continue to receive requests for interviews and formal presentations. On June 25, Lunine and Daniels gave invited testimony as the only witnesses at a House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology hearing on the future of human spaceflight (see Chapter 6).

Various dissemination activities continued, which included talks given by NRC staff Alan Angleman and Michael Moloney at the International Astronautical Congress; Michael Moloney at COSPAR Assembly in Moscow; and participation by members Mary Lynne Dittmar and Asif Siddiqi at an Atlantic Council conference on renewing the space program. The final report was released in late October and distributed, bringing the official work of the committee to a close. Members of the committee received requests for talks and interviews throughout this period, and such requests are expected to continue as interest in the report remains high among a variety of communities.

Membership³

Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., Purdue University (co-chair)

Jonathan I. Lunine, Cornell University (co-chair)

Bernard F. Burke, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (emeritus)

Mary Lynne Dittmar, Dittmar Associates, Inc.

Pascale Ehrenfreund, George Washington University

James S. Jackson, University of Michigan

Frank G. Klotz,⁴ Council on Foreign Relations

Franklin D. Martin, Martin Consulting, Inc.

David C. Mowery, University of California, Berkeley (emeritus)

Bryan D. O’Connor, Independent Aerospace Consultant

Stanley Presser, University of Maryland

Helen R. Quinn, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (emeritus)

Asif A. Siddiqi, Fordham University

John C. Sommerer, Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory (retired)

Roger Tourangeau, Westat, Inc.

Ariel Waldman, Spacehack.org

Cliff Zukin, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Staff

Sandra J. Graham, Senior Program Officer, SSB (study director)

Abigail A. Sheffer,⁵ Associate Program Officer, SSB

Amanda R. Thibault, Research Associate (until January 2013)

Dionna Williams, Program Coordinator, SSB

F. Harrison Dreves, 2013 Summer Lloyd V. Berkner Space Policy Intern

Cheryl Moy, Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellow, Fall 2012

Sierra Smith, Fall 2013 Lloyd V. Berkner Space Policy Intern

Padamashri Suresh, Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellow, Winter 2014

Public and Stakeholder Opinions Panel Membership⁶

Roger Tourangeau, Westat, Inc. (chair)

Molly Andolina, DePaul University

Jennifer L. Hochschild, Harvard University

James S. Jackson, University of Michigan

Roger D. Launius, Smithsonian Institution

Jon D. Miller, University of Michigan

Stanley Presser, University of Maryland, College Park

Cliff Zukin, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Staff

Krisztina Marton, Senior Program Officer, Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT)

Constance Citro, Director, CNSTAT

Jacqui Sovde, Program Associate, CNSTAT

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³ All terms ended on November 30, 2014.

⁴ Resigned from the committee April 10, 2014, to take up an appointment as Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

⁵ Promoted to Program Officer in 2015.

⁶ All terms ended on June 30, 2014.

Technical Feasibility Panel Membership⁷

John C. Sommerer, Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory (chair)

Douglas S. Stetson, Space Science and Exploration Consulting Group (vice chair)

Arnold D. Aldrich, Aerospace Consultant

Douglas M. Allen, Independent Consultant

Raymond E. Arvidson, Washington University, St. Louis

Richard C. Atkinson, University of California, San Diego (emeritus)

Robert D. Braun, Georgia Institute of Technology

Elizabeth R. Cantwell, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

David E. Crow, University of Connecticut (emeritus)

Ravi B. Deo, EMBR

Robert S. Dickman, Independent Consultant, RD Space, LLC

Dava J. Newman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

John R. Rogacki, Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (Ocala)

Guillermo Trotti, Trotti and Associates, Inc.

Linda A. Williams, Wyle Aerospace Group

Staff

Alan Angleman, Senior Program Officer, ASEB

Dionna Williams, Program Coordinator, SSB

REVIEW OF MEPAG REPORT ON PLANETARY PROTECTION FOR MARS SPECIAL REGIONS

Following the recent parallel requests from NASA and the European Space Agency’s planetary protection officers, the NRC and European Science Foundation (ESF) jointly established an ad hoc committee to review the 2014 Mars Special Regions report issued by the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group and suggest potential modifications to COSPAR’s current guidelines for the planetary protection requirements for such regions. The joint committee consists of seven members based in the United States and eight members, including the chair, based in Europe. An organizing meeting was held on October 7, 2014, at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, and the first meeting of the committee was held at the German Research Center for Geosciences, Potsdam, Germany, on December 16-17, 2014. The committee’s second and final meeting was scheduled at National Academies’ Beckman Center in Irvine, California, on February 12-13, 2015. The committee’s final report is scheduled for release no later than July 2015.

Membership⁸

Petra Rettberg, German Aerospace Center, Cologne (chair)

Alexandre Anesio, University of Bristol, United Kingdom

Victor R. Baker, University of Arizona

John A. Baross, University of Washington

Sherry L. Cady, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Christine M. Foreman, Montana State University

Ernst Hauber, German Aerospace Center, Berlin

Gian Gabriele Ori, Universita d’Annunzio, Pescara, Italy

David Pearce, Northumbria University, United Kingdom

Nilton O. Renno, University of Michigan

Gary Ruvkun, Massachusetts General Hospital

Birgit Sattler, University of Innsbruck, Austria

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⁷ All terms ended on June 30, 2014.

⁸ All terms began on November 19, 2014.

Mark P. Saunders, Independent Consultant

Dirk Wagner, German Research Center for Geosciences, Potsdam

Frances Westall, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Orléans, France

Staff

David H. Smith, Senior Program Officer, SSB

Emmanouil Detsis, Science Officer, ESF

Andrea Rebholz,⁹ Program Coordinator, ASEB

A STRATEGY TO OPTIMIZE THE U.S. OPTICAL/INFRARED SYSTEM IN THE ERA OF THE LARGE SYNOPTIC SURVEY TELESCOPE

With funding from NSF, the NRC appointed the ad hoc Committee on a Strategy to Optimize the U.S. Ground-Based Optical and Infrared Astronomy System in the Era of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (led by the BPA). In order to position the observational, instrumentation, data management, and support capabilities of the U.S. optical and infrared astronomy (O/IR) system to best address the science objectives identified in the NRC reports New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics (2010) and Vision and Voyages for Planetary Sciences in the Decade 2013-2022 (2011) and to help achieve the best science return from NSF’s investment in O/IR astronomy over the next 10-15 years, the committee was convened to write a short report that will recommend and prioritize adjustments to the U.S. ground-based O/IR system that will better position the system to address the NWNH science objectives over the next 10-15 years. The committee is considering needs and strategies for several interrelated components of the system: existing and planned focal plane instrumentation; focal plane instrumentation and technology development; and data management, processing, mining, and archiving. The committee is also tasked to make recommendations or offer comments on organizational structure, program balance, and funding, with discussion of the evidentiary bases, as appropriate. A town hall was held at the June 2014 meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Boston, Massachusetts, to engage the community in a discussion of issues relevant to the study.

The committee was appointed in July 2014. Its first meeting was held on July 31-August 1, 2014, at the Keck Center in Washington, D.C. After its first meeting, the committee requested white papers from the astronomy community to aid its work. The second meeting was held on October 12-13 at the Beckman Center in Irvine, California, and the third meeting was held on December 2-3 at the Keck Center in Washington, D.C. The committee’s report entered review in early February 2015 and is anticipated for release in April 2015.

Membership¹⁰

Debra M. Elmegreen,¹¹ Vassar College (chair)

Todd A. Boroson, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network

Debra Fischer, Yale University

Joshua A. Frieman, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Lynne Hillenbrand, California Institute of Technology

Buell T. Jannuzi, University of Arizona

Robert P. Kirshner, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Lori M. Lubin, University of California, Davis

Robert Lupton, Princeton University

Paul L. Schechter, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Paul Adrian Vanden Bout,¹² National Radio Astronomy Observatory

J. Craig Wheeler, University of Texas, Austin

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⁹ Staff from other NRC boards who are shared with the SSB.

¹⁰ Term began July 11, 2014 unless otherwise indicated.

¹¹ Term began May 23, 2014.

¹² Term began July 15, 2014.

Consultant to the Committee

Joel Parriott, American Astronomical Society

Staff

David B. Lang, Senior Program Officer, BPA

Linda Walker, Program Coordinator, BPA

Beth Dolan, Financial Manager, BPA

Katie Daud, Research Associate, SSB

SURVEY OF SURVEYS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE DECADAL SURVEY PROCESS

The ad hoc Committee on Survey of Surveys: Lessons Learned from the Decadal Survey Process was established as a follow-on activity to the SSB’s November 2012 workshop on lessons learned from the decadal survey process. In particular, the committee was tasked to identify a set of major lessons learned from the recent decadal survey planning process and present a set of options for possible evolutionary changes and improvements. The members of the committee were formally appointed in mid-May and held their first meeting at the Keck Center in Washington, D.C., on June 23-24, 2014.

The committee held its second meeting at the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington, D.C., on August 25-27. During that meeting, the committee received presentations regarding the perspectives on decadal surveys from various stakeholders, including congressional staff, officials representing various scientific disciplines from NASA and NSF, and professional societies.

The committee’s final, scheduled meeting took place at the Beckman Center in Irvine, California, on December 8-10. The committee’s three formal meetings were supplemented by numerous conference calls and webcasts. Work on a full draft of the committee’s report began in the fourth quarter; release is currently scheduled for the second quarter of 2015.

Membership¹³

Alan Dressler, Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science (chair)

Daniel N. Baker, University of Colorado, Boulder

David A. Bearden, Aerospace Corporation

Roger D. Blandford, Stanford University

Stacey Boland, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Wendy M. Calvin, University of Nevada, Reno

Athena Coustenis, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France

J. Todd Hoeksema, Stanford University

Anthony C. Janetos, Boston University

Stephen Mackwell, Lunar and Planetary Institute

J. Douglas McCuistion, X-energy, LLC

Norman H. Sleep, Stanford University

Charles E. Woodward, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

A. Thomas Young, Lockheed Martin Corporation (retired)

Staff

David H. Smith, Senior Program Officer, SSB

Dionna Williams, Program Coordinator, SSB

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¹³ All terms began May 21, 2014.

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