AAS Public Policy Blog

Its astronomy advisory committee meeting time in DC.  The Astrophysics Subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council held its meeting on Oct. 8-9.  And the Congressionally Chartered AAAC held its meeting last week (Oct. 15-16).  You can see presentations from the AAAC meeting here.

It was interesting to see the process of how federal agencies like NASA, NSF, and DOE get advice from the community.  Everyone is waiting with bated breath for the Astro2010 Decadal Survey before making too many new plans for Astrophysics.  In addition to various mission updates (Fermi is performing fabulously! so is Kepler), there was an interesting discussion about whether to start a new line of named postdoctoral fellowships (like Hubble, Einstein, Sagan) for technology/instrumentation.  Its also clear that inter-agency cooperation (NASA, NSF, DOE) will be the way of the future.  There was even talk of whether this would be the last US decadal survey because it would be a global effort from next time.  We’ll have to wait and see on that one.

On a policy matter – Congress just passed the FY10 Energy and Water Appropriations bill and sent it to the Prez for his signature.  Why do we care?  Because this provides funding for DOE and DOE needs to re-start the production of Pu-238 in order to produce RTGs (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators) to explore the solar system.  It made it into the Administration’s budget request this year – but Congress zeroed out the request saying they want more details.  So we’ll have to make sure it gets funded next year!  (If you are interested in this issue, see the NRC report.)

I attended the final open meeting of the Astro2010 Survey Committee this morning.  This is the top-level committee chaired by Roger Blandford that will consider and synthesize the input provided by the Science Frontiers Panels, the Program Prioritization Panels and the various working groups.

Representatives from the 3 major funding agencies (NASA, NSF, DOE) were there to present their answers to questions that had been posed to them.  A loud and clear message that came through was that funds are pretty tight and they are looking to the Decadal Survey Report to provide guidance on prioritizing investments in the coming decade.  NASA Astrophysics in particular expects to have about $4B total for new missions over the 2013-2023 timeframe.  Any augmentations to the R&D budget, extensions to older missions etc. will all have to come out of this $4B pot.  It was also interesting to hear that the stimulus money allowed NSF’s success rate for grants to go up from 21% to 36% this year, but this is unlikely to be sustained in coming years.

Kevin Marvel (AAS) and Kate Kirby (APS) presented the professional societies’ perspectives.  The ground based community was represented by Tony Readhead (Caltech) and Tim Beers (Michigan State Univ.).  Kevin made a strong case for the committee to own this report for the entire decade and not stop after some initial outreach for the final report.

Stay tuned!  In the meantime, you can get more info on Astro2010 at the NRC website.

I’m excited to be the new Bahcall Public Policy Fellow at the AAS!  I just started last week – I was previously at NASA Goddard as the Lead for Education and Public Outreach in the  Astrophysics Division.  It’s a great time to be working on policy issues for the AAS and I look forward to working on behalf of the astronomy community for the next two years.

Congress is consumed with the health care debate right now, followed closely by the war in Afghanistan.  Its going to be a little while before funding for astronomy is on Congress’s agenda.  But – President Obama just made a speech last week on Innovation and Sustainable Growth last week where he specifically called out the importance of investing in basic research.  You can see the full text of his speech here.  You can also download the 22-page document by the National Economic Council and the Office of Science and Technology Policy titled “A Strategy for American Innovation: Driving Towards Sustainable Growth and Quality Jobs.”

In other news, Congress held several hearings in September on the Augustine Commission’s report reviewing NASA’s manned space flight program.  It appears that there is no debate about the merits of a manned space flight program, discussions are instead focused on how to accomplish it.  You can find the summary of the report here.  We will have to wait and see what the implications of this report will be on science funding for NASA in the FY2010 budget.  Stay tuned!

Finally – drop me a line if you have thoughts or comments on the AAS policy blog.  Our goal is to keep you informed about what’s going on in Washington that could affect astro policy.  I’d love to know how we’re doing!