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.

The Astro2010 panels are underway. Draft schedules in PDF form can be found at the Astro2010 site.

I’m currently sitting in the Optical and Infrared astronomy from the ground panel, where TMT is presenting. It’s tempting to try and live-blog this sort of event, but 1) I’m not sure how the NRC staff would feel about that, and b) I’m not sure how interesting that’d be anyway. I imagine most people reading live-blogs right now are reading about the latest iPhone.

In any event, I’ll write up some blog posts and informational emails about the panels and my impressions, as well as link to any presentations that are made public. For example, if the powerpoint presentations made by each project are made available on the NRC site, I’ll be sure to link to those.

I found myself fascinated by a lot of the Station of the Profession position papers up on the Astro2010 web site. The community definitely had thoughts on a wide range of issues from facilities to various aspects of employment, and the profession. There are also numerous science white papers as well.

In other decadal news, the latest chair’s bulletin (PDF link) has been posted to the Astro2010 site today, and was sent in Decadal Update email today.

Plenty of Decadal News today : The fourth chair’s update is online. The state of the profession position paper submission window is open, and the science frontier panels have been set. In addition, there is a partial list of science white papers now online.

The latest Decadal survey information is always at the Astro 2010 Web site

The third From the Chair update from Roger Blandford is posted online (PDF link) . This update covers the submission process for science white papers. The science white papers will not be submitted via email, but rather via the web at the Astro2010 website. The submission window begins on Monday, February 9.

Astro2010 has posted a second Chair’s Bulletin from Roger Blandford. The full text (PDF) is available on the Astro2010 website.

This will be included in a Decadal Update email from the AAS to our members going out sometime tomorrow.

Below, and in the podcast feed is audio from the the two Astro2010 sessions at Long Beach. Specifically, Roger Blandford’s talk Astronomy and Astrophysics 2010: Progress Report to the Community and the subsequent town hall, Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey 2010 Launch

Astronomy and Astrophysics 2010: Progress Report to the Community [ 52:05 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (251)