 Hello, everybody. Thanks for your patience. We're going to get started today with this NASA science town hall with Nikki Fox. These papers for science here at NASA headquarters in Washington, D. C. We also have members of the science leadership team with us today as well to share updates about the budget and to answer your questions in addition to Nikki, we have Holly Dane, the director of the resource management division. We have Karen Saint-Germain, the director of the Earth Sciences division, Laurie Glaze, the planetary science division director, Jeff Gramley, program director for Mars sample return, Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, Mark Clampett, director of the astrophysics division, Peg Luce, who is the acting director for the heliophysics division, Diane Mallorick, acting director for the biology and physical sciences division, and John Gagosian division director for the joint agency satellite division. We are recording the town hall and the slides will be made available later today at science.nasa.gov. If you have a question that you've not already put into the I.O. system, we're going to share that link in the chat. That is where you put your questions. We'll be answering them after we have some presentations. And with that, we're going to start off with Nikki Fox. Thank you so much, Karen. It is a pleasure to be here this morning to introduce our budget for the science mission directorate. So we'll go to the next chart, please. And that is our current science mission directorate org chart. And so you can see there's been some movement on that org chart with myself moving up and replacing Thomas at the as the A.A. Peg Luce very graciously stepping in as the acting division director for heliophysics with Nikki rail, moving up from the associate director for flight up to serving as the deputy. And I also want to highlight and thank Diane Malarick for stepping up when Craig Kundrock retired earlier this year. She stepped up to the acting division director for biological and physical sciences and Devon Griffith has stepped up to be her acting deputy. So we really do appreciate their support and you'll get to hear from Diane in a little bit. And also, I think we need to welcome Mark Clampen as the new director of the astrophysics division. So welcome to Mark. And again, you'll be able to hear from him in a few minutes. So I think we'll move to the next chart. Thanks. So I'm going to try and go through these pretty quickly because I want to make sure we have as much time for questions as possible. And thank you in advance to everyone who, well, thank you to everyone who's already submitted them. And thanks to you who are probably currently typing them in. We really appreciate that. So I won't belabor this just to say that in SMD, we are completely supporting all of these, these, these highlights, these things you see here at the agency level. We are supporting the clearly the moon to Mars. We're supporting our earth science investments. We are supporting the transition from ISS to the commercial orbit destinations. And of course, we are really investing in and helping with NASA's workforce next to our please. So if we hone in on the SMD budget priorities, you can see here, actually, you know what, you can see them quickly. I've got charts on each one of them and I really want to save time. So just let's go to the first chart, which is on building an innovative and balanced program that is driven by the highest priorities. And so, as you all know, all our programs are informed by our decadal surveys, not just our decadal surveys, but also other national priorities that include welfare management, planetary defense, orbital debris, space weather. But, you know, really we start first and foremost with our decadal surveys. Many of you will know that Astro and planetary have recently received their brand new decadal surveys. And so they are off and running on implementing those biological and physical sciences is looking forward to receiving theirs later this year. And of course, the heliophysics decadal in full swing. And we're looking forward to receiving the priorities from them sometime next year. And of course, earth science just went through their midterm. So lots of lots of things going on here. We are supporting over 56 missions that are in formulation and development, which is the honor and the really cool thing here is they're on a full range of platforms. So we're going from from CubeSats all the way up to the, the, the large, the large buses that support some of our bigger flagship missions. So we're really excited to see a full diversity of platforms in the portfolio. Of course, we all love our competitively awarded PI led missions and we have those in all of our divisions. And we continue to operate over 70 missions up in space. So, of course, that includes the James Webb telescope and all of I can't name them all, but you'll see them on the fleet chart and we love every one of them. And then we also continue to support our scientists across the country. We have the people that really do all the innovative creative science that really turn all of the mission data we have into these groundbreaking discoveries and just huge academic achievements. Next chart, please. So the second one of our priorities is to advance the moon to Mars objectives and really to take our place as the lead for the Artemis science. So we want to prepare for the eventual human missions that will go back to that will go to Mars. And the way we will do that is to actually show our ability to return samples from the Martian surface using the Mars sample return mission. We want to continue to develop small sets, instruments and other payloads that will serve science that will allow us to continue to do long term exploration and utilization needs. So we're going to do a full range of lunar and planetary science again, sort of using that full portfolio of platforms and applying those to lunar planetary Helio and BPS science investigations. We want to conduct lunar science through our innovative commercial lunar payload services and you'll hear in a little bit about the excitement of our clips program as we're getting ready to launch the first two clips payloads in May and June of this year. We want to confirm the presence of volatiles and early ice early in FY 25 with our Viper rover. So really, really cool stuff going on. That'll be at the South Pole roving around and giving us information about what's down there. And we want to continue to develop our heliophysics environmental and radiation measurement experiment suite. Who came up with that name? The Hermes payload. We want to we're really looking forward to having that installed on the first phase of the gateway next chart. Please, Andrew. Okay, so promoting US leadership and earth system science, something that is really near and dear to our hearts. So we will continue to build the earth system observatory, which is the next generation of those decadal missions that will really advance our understanding of the complex earth system. And again, really doing the cutting edge science and the first, first of a kind measurements to really push us further forward in earth science. We'll establish a new class of competed explorers in the in the earth science division. So as most of you know, we have the explorers already in Astro and Helio and now earth coming in and and also supporting the explorers program. We will observe earth's land, ocean, ice and atmosphere to allow us to really understand the drivers and outcomes of our changing climate. Partnering again with industry and international collaborators. So we can do some very cost effective approaches to earth science. We'll be advancing technology, research models, data systems and applications to really improve our understanding and our ability to predict the changing climate and its interaction with with human communities. We'll be delivering actionable solutions. And so again, taking all the really great science data, all the cutting edge science we do and developing these really actionable solutions that will meet the needs of our partners, other federal agencies. Local, state and international governments and finally, but definitely not least communicating just how amazing our system is, how dynamic and how much it changes. And we'll be communicating that to the public through our virtual physical and virtual displays of the earth information center, which actually will be unveiled here in the east lobby headquarters in June. So looking forward to that next hour, please. So we're working to broaden our participation and increase diversity in science. So we'll be implementing diversity strategies in line with our broader agency plan. So we want to increase the number of solicitations that that require proposals to include these inclusion plans, including inclusion plans. Yes. We will be transitioning our dual anonymous peer review to be the default review method for all roses proposals. Some roses solicitations don't don't sort of turn easily to to dapper, but instead of them just continuing, they'll actually have to get like a waiver against using dapper. So we're really trying to push the dual anonymous throughout all of our roses solicitations. We also want to have a broad use of accessibility tools and multiple languages. So to make sure we are really including everybody we can in the excitement of NASA science. I will implement an equity action plan. So that is continuing the bridge program to provide this environment where underserved communities are just better equipped and have the tools they need to be able to partner with NASA. And also to make data available on the cloud and provide free and again, multilingual training on how to use the NASA data. We'll implement the 2023 plan to increase support and opportunities for historically black colleges and universities and improve the psychological and physical safety of science teams by really encouraging all teams to use sort of statement of principles in how we do our engagements. Next chart, please. All right. And the last of our SMD priorities is opening up science for all and allowing and leveraging all of the really cutting edge techniques to lower the boundaries for everyone to actually take part in science. So we will initiate the SMD core data and computing services program. We will advance transparency, inclusivity, access and reproducibility in science data and research will implement the data and information policy to so that we make scientific data publications and software completely open for everybody. We'll be executing our tops initiative to train 20,000 scientists in open science practices over the next five years. And obviously we'll continue to invest in AI and ML techniques, which really do improve the data discovery. Next chart, please. Okay, so this, this is, I want to hit this one early. And so you have plenty of time to type in any questions. We want to talk about some of the big changes in the SMD budget and so you will see when you, when, when you look at our budget that we have 2.5 billion dollars in FY 24 for science and so this is an increase of $278 million over what was enacted in the FY 23 appropriation. And that is to allow us to really move forward and initiate four of our system observatory missions. It also includes next and additional funding for applied sciences. So again, really turning and focusing on maintaining our leadership of earth science in in the world. You will also see a 949.3 million dollars in FY 24 for our Mars sample return mission. And this is 127 million increase over the appropriation in 23. And this is to allow us to maintain progress towards the earliest possible launch date, which is, which is very important. We've had a lot of questions about containing the cost for Mars sample return. We have delayed confirmation of the mission into FY 24 because we are doing a very, very deep dive into the Mars sample return and its implementation. We will each of the major subsystems for Mars sample return are about to go through their PDRs. When they have done that, we will do a pause and we will actually do an independent review board will come in. This is the second IRB that will assess the Mars sample return program. We will allow them to do a full independent assessment. They'll do an independent assessment of the design, the life cycle cost, and also the schedule. And so as a result of that, we expect our FY 25 to 28 budgets will also grow over the current estimates in order to allow us to implement that mission as early as possible. Other reductions have been made in the FY 24 to actually sort of offset some of these increases and that includes the geospaced dynamics constellation in the heliophysics program. That mission has been is it is funded in 23. So we are continuing to make great progress through 23 in FY 24. We will assess what a pause looks like for that mission. And then, you know, get it back on track as soon as possible. And then there's also been some delays in the astrophysics decadal survey response as well. So I'm going to let you type your questions in on all of those and I will pass to Holly, please to deal with the next couple of charts. All right. A few budget charts for you. This is a chart that we've shown several times in our briefings before, just to show you how we're tracking against our external cost commitments for missions recently launched missions included on this chart are Emit and SWAT. And this is a slightly new way of showing it what it shows is that 17 of the 32 missions tracked here have completed development under their cost commitments. And when you include web, all of these missions have overrun their phase D cost commitments by a net 3.9%. Nikki mentioned some of the some of the strategies we use in more that we're using a more sample return to really contain cost and many of those strategies have been implemented successfully on other missions. So we use independent cost estimates for large strategic missions, independent review boards as well, and critically our joint cost and schedule estimates that are a part of all of our large mission confirmations. And so what this really shows is that at a portfolio level it's enabling us to to manage cost within our commitments. You go to the next chart. I'll just walk you briefly through the request. So you can see there were 24 requests for science is 8.26 billion. First science request in FY 24 is 2.472.8 billion. And that includes all the content Nikki just mentioned planetary science request is 3.383.2 billion. Go to the next chart. You'll see the request for astrophysics is 1.557.4 billion heliophysics at 750.9 million and then BPS 96.5. And you can see how those compare to the FY 23 enacted. Thank you very much, Holly. And I think we do need to just focus on on the top number and really celebrate that this is an amazing budget for the science and mission directorate at 8.2. 8.3 billion dollars. And so with that, I'm I've asked each of the division directors to to brief you on the highlights of their budgets in each of their portfolios. I'd ask them to do this brief quickly so we can get to the questions because there are a lot coming in. So with that, I will hand it to Karen. All right. The next slide. Okay, so what's new? So Nikki already mentioned that the the bulk of the increase in this budget is actually going to support the for our system observatory missions. Those are the the designated observables identified in our decadal survey, as well as landsat next. All of those have now moved into phase a, so into formulation passing successfully passing the first milestone. And and of course, that's with the exception of the surface deformation and change because we are about to launch NYSAR. NYSAR will be filling the role of that designated observable. We've also, Nikki mentioned open source science. Earth science is leading that initiative on behalf of an in in collaboration with the entirety of the science mission directorate. And we've increased our resources for that. That's largely to accelerate toward the goals that Nikki already walked you through. We are initiating the Earth explorers expecting the first AO release very shortly and step one selections in in fiscal year 24 and really happy to report that since we replant NYSAR, it has not only been holding to plan, but now all of the equipment is is in the high bay in India at our partners facility, Israel, and with a great thanks to the US Air Force and the C 17 crew to that got it there. So we are moving into the next 11 months of integrating this extraordinary instrument onto the spacecraft and preparing for launch. And in continuity news, we have agreed to partner with ESA on a Sentinel 6C mission that will extend the the 30 plus year record of altimetry. What's I won't go through all of the categories under what's the same but just to to emphasize the earth information center and the greenhouse gas center. These are investments to help make the the insights and the and the decision support tools and the the data that we collect more readily available and usable to a broader array of of interested users. Our fire sense initiative, which is actually a cross NASA initiative in partnership with with aeronautics and technology to bring all of NASA capabilities to bear on the the issue of wildfires. Through out their life cycle, in other words, pre fire during the active fire post fire and subsequent cascading impacts. So that's an exciting new initiative and I think I will stop there. Thanks. Fantastic and we are moving on from there to Lori glaze in planetary. Great. Thank you. So first off, I just want to say, you know, I'm very, very thankful as you heard from from Holly that the planetary budget this year at 3.383 billion dollars. I'm very thankful for that continued support for our planetary science division portfolio. That's a level 183 million more than the FY 23 appropriation and you're from Nikki. A lot of that is an increased support. Marseille return, you'll hear from Jeff momentarily, but it really pleases me that that that support really demonstrates the strong administration support for for this agency priority. And just to note that that is over and above the rest of the planetary science division portfolio and not impacting other things within the division. I'm not going to read through all of these here, but I did want to highlight some of the things that have changed. I'm going to start with Neo surveyor. This is great Neo surveyor the near Earth object surveyor mission to detect and characterize near Earth objects that are potentially threatening to Earth and identify those that are 140 meters and larger. This mission was confirmed in November and really pleased that we have the budget within this, the budget request to support that mission towards a 2028 launch. You'll also see a modest increase in the RNA budget. This is particularly important because it it's making progress towards the decadal recommendation to eventually get to 10% of the overall planetary budget for our competed research and analysis program. So we're not all the way there yet, but we will take steps each year. You'll see that in the out years. I'm trying to working towards getting to that that 10% number. There's also you'll see in the budget, an increase in funding to support the new psyche launch date, which is now October 5th is when the window opens for psyche. So please that we got the additional funding there in the request to support the new schedule for psyche. You'll also see significant expansion in our support for the European Space Agency's Rosalind Franklin mission. We're already providing the Mars organic mass analyzer mass spectrometer for that mission. But as many people know, the mission got delayed because of the war in Ukraine and a break in relationships between ESA and Russia. And so we're very happy that we're able to step in and provide some assistance and support on that mission to get it to launch by 2028. Of course, within the, the, the budget that we have, we're thankful for all that we have, but we still work within the constraints that we have. You will see that the delay to Veritas with the launch no earlier than 2031 does show up in the, in the President's budget request. I know there's lots of questions about this one. We'll talk about those when we get to the Q and a. So I'm going to defer for the discussion till then. And you'll also see that within the constraints, we have eliminated the investments in the dynamic radioisotope power systems and the associated technologies, primarily due to a lack of mission poll for those, for those technologies. Just real quickly, a couple of items on what's the same. I wanted to reinforce that the New Frontiers 5 announcement of opportunity is still on track for a planned release in November of 2023. And I wanted to mention that we are still, you'll see the continued support there for Europa clipper and just wanted to mention that we're really getting excited about all the hardware coming together on clipper and moving towards that launch in 2024. And the fact that that's still the same indicates stability there and their cost and schedule, which is great news. And with that, I'm going to pass it on over to Jeff. Thank you. Thanks, Lori. So MSR is the mission to return the diverse and scientifically selected set of samples that perseverance is collect to date. One of the main objectives of the mission, of course, is to look the search for whether life could have existed elsewhere in the universe. Of course, perseverance for those, I'm sure most of you have been following that. We established the first cache of samples here in the early part of this calendar year. So that gives us mission resiliency against any failure to perseverance going forward. And the plan is for perseverance, of course, to continue to collect even more exciting samples and the intent will be to bring back the full set of possible. We entered phase B in October. Of course, the mission remains complex. There are several first, of course, the program elements include the Mav, which is the Mars Ascent vehicle that's being built by Marshal. Of course, it will be the first rocket that launched from the surface of another planet. The helicopter we at the towards the end of phase A last summer we we descope the European sample fetch rover and that allowed us to move from a two lander architecture to a single lander architecture. Averaging the success of ingenuity on perseverance and we're augmenting that so that it's can can carry sample tubes back if we needed to from a from a surface cache. The primary plan though remains perseverance bringing samples back and then the lander itself, which is 1.8 times the size of the biggest thing we've landed on on Mars to date. And CCRS, which is the capture containment return and system that's the payload on the ESA earth return orbiter. And of course, besides containing the earth entry vehicle, it's the the system that's implementing the 1st attempt at our implementation of back planetary protection to satisfy restricted earth return requirements. Of course, much of what we're doing beyond the science that MSR will will yield where we're providing information that's going to be crucial to enabling future human missions to Mars. Specifically in understanding the nature of death so we can design spacesuits and understanding the, you know, helping them understand how conservatively we need to design the mission to account for the back planetary protection and understanding the toxic toxicity or the regular. Our mission gets harder as we go on and with later launches because of dust storm seasons and orbital dynamics. So we're working to to our earliest possible launch date and the 24 budget request supports our ability to do that. Nikki mentioned our path to confirmation. We're headed towards our, we're in our PDR season where we're looking to have our system PDR by the fall. But as Nikki mentioned, and as a way to make sure we're continuing to scrub our numbers and our architecture. We are bringing in a second independent review board to examine the program before we take the program to confirmation. Of course, all of those independent reviews include looking at our D scope options. I think that's it Joel. Thank you, Jeff. The 24 budget is extremely strong for a lunar science as Nikki mentioned, we'll have the first two and maybe three clips landings this year, and we're continuing the development of strong science elements like Viper lunar trailblazer and our PI proposed competitively selected instrument suites that fly to the surface of the moon on future clips landings. What's changed in this budget is that we've increased lunar research and science team support and curation work to get ready for the Artemis 3 first human landing at the South Pole in 2025. This also includes competitively selected geology teams and Artemis deployed instruments which accrual deploy on the surface on Artemis 3. As part of this budget in response to advisory committee input, we accelerated the completion of the lunar trailblazer project and we've manifested on an early delivery to the moon. Instead of flying in 2025, it'll fly at the end of 2023 on the second clips mission. We have worked out a joint agreement with the department of energy to implement on clips a new instrument to look at the far side of the moon at 21 centimeter radio astronomy to test technology for future investigations do wants to do and see if they can detect the first signature of the dark ages of the universe. As I mentioned, we created within the budget Artemis instrument lines for that'll be competitively selected from community proposals for handheld and deployed instruments on the surface of the moon. We also chose to delay the Viper mission one year as you may have heard about last year from 2023 to 2024 in order to implement additional propulsion tests that NASA mandated to be levied on the astrobotic grip and lander before we used it for the Viper delivery to the South Pole of the moon. This means that we've modified the clips funding in 2024 and 2025 to accommodate that delayed Viper delivery and we've also added increased NASA systems engineering and technical support knowledge which is available to the clips vendors that they choose to take advantage of it. Although you don't see it as a separate budget sub element we started in 2023, the science definition science requirements and trace ability to start outlining the endurance a mission the South Pole a can basin sample return mission, which was recommended in the recent to cattle survey as the highest priority medium strategic strategic mission for lunar discovery and exploration. Other things that pretty well stayed the same and lunar discovery from last year. Let me turn now to Mark Lampin of astrophysics. Hi, good morning. So this is also a very strong budget for the astrophysics division. I'm going to quickly run through what is changed and then just re emphasize what has not changed and where many of our current areas of focus are so in terms of change this budget does have a modest Decadal wedge that begins the technology maturation of the Decadal survey recommended mission habitable worlds observatory. We also will extend operating missions as the senior reviewers recommended and that includes missions like Hubble, Chandra and test the Transiting Exoplanet Survey satellite and also several other satellites that all contribute to the Decadal survey recommendation on TDAM or time domain and multi messenger science examples includes Swift and Fermi. We are continuing our orderly and responsible shutdown of the severe program. And we believe that this budget continues to allow that process to run to its conclusion. We are making some delays in the explorer programs of about one year. And we are also making some reductions in the Athena program. And this is pending the ESA reformulation study activity that's underway. And when that reformulation study is complete, we will be able to reassess both our contributions and start getting back to moving towards some kind of confirmation in the program. What hasn't changed and what has remained the same is we continue to operate a very robust computer science program for the James Webb Space Telescope. And that telescope continues to amaze us with the data it's producing and lots of groundbreaking new science and science results. We're also continuing to make excellent progress on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which were launched in 2027. And that program stays on constant schedule. We also are responding this year to the another Decadal recommendation, which is a probe class mission to undertake either x-ray or far infrared science. The AO for that mission will be released around the middle of the year. And I just note that we're planning to make several down selects for competitive phase A studies, but ultimately we'll be funding one mission going forward once we've made the final selection. And that will be on the basis of the compelling science. And another area where we're continuing to broaden that portfolio of time domain and multi-messenger missions is a partnership with Israel on UltraSat, which is a Whitefield UV mission. And again, this is helping to address the recommendation by the Decadal survey to focus on TDAM science or time domain and multi-messenger science. So with that, I will conclude. Thank you. Next up, we have Peg Luce, the acting director for Heliophysics. Thanks. In Heliophysics, we are very excited to welcome two mid-ex missions to our portfolio, the MUSE and Helioswarm missions that were selected in the past year and noting that it is a change both that those missions have been defined, but also that we were able to select two missions. Very excited about that. We haven't had a mid-ex in the portfolio in a while. With as many of you, anyone who's familiar with Heliophysics knows the drive science centers were a highly recommended initiative from the Decadal survey. We put a lot of thought into the development of those centers and went through a phase one process that was very, very productive and helpful to the teams. We were able to select three drive science centers. So we are covering the breadth of our science in those three drive science centers and they are getting started with their phase two activities, the first year of their five-year program this year. We are an increase in our budget. An area of increase is an increased investment in modernizing our Heliophysics digital resource library or our data archives and some increases, increased investments in AI and ML tools. One other difference was that we made the decision not to confirm Solar Cruiser, which was a tech demo mission selected for rideshare with IMAP. As it was progressing, we are very pleased that we attempted that invested in that experiment and saw progress made on that technology. The costs and schedule were not going to align though with flying with IMAP and so we did make a decision not to confirm. And again, anyone who's familiar with Heliophysics is quite aware that because of other budget pressures in the science portfolio, the budget proposes a pause in the development of the GDC mission until Decadal survey recommendations are received. And I know there are questions on that we'll talk more about. What's the same? So our program of maintaining a very high cadence of explorers opportunities continues. We released a SMECS AO in 2022 and are in the process of evaluating outstanding proposals that we received earlier this year. And we do plan to release a Midex AO in 25. We are on track to launch IMAP in 2025 and as you probably know, flying along with it will be the NOAA space weather follow on L1 mission as well as our Carothers mission of opportunity. We are continuing to make investments in orbital debris and space situational awareness to mature technology, address gaps in orbital object detection and improve our scientific understanding of the interactions of orbital debris with the environment and how it's affected by space weather. In the space weather program, the Hermes instruments on Gateway are proceeding to payload level INT. We're growing the program of space weather research and applications RNA opportunities. And we're also preparing to release an AO for a partnership with ESA on their L5 vigil mission. That would be a contributed instrument. We again are very pleased that the drive initiative from the Decadal Survey is apparent in the increases that we've been able to make in the size of our RNA program. We are continuing to support and very proud of the capabilities that we support at wallets in the research range and the sounding rocket program, including benefits to commercial launch launchers who are who we've been working with recently. We continue to support 11 missions in development and 18 operating missions, a very vibrant portfolio. And then finally, the dynamic AO will be released as scheduled in FY23. We do have funds for phase A studies. Given other priorities within the science portfolio, we do not have funding to carry out dynamic in the FY24 President's budget. And dynamic and GDC are very intimately linked. And so we are going to continue with release of the draft AO that's about to come out, but we will have to also look at adjustments that might need to be made. Given the changes in the potential impact to GDC. And with that, I'll turn it over to Diane. All right. I'm happy to be here talking for my first time about the BPS budget. So what's changed for us what's new is our serious initiative it stands for commercially enabled rapid space science. And the key letter in that is rapid. So much of our research is done on the space station and is a pretty long time to go from time you concept your experiment to sending the samples up and bringing them down for analysis. And what we seek to do is to improve the pace increase the pace of research by 10 to 100 fold by focusing on capabilities that would allow for in situ sample preparation, meaning on orbit sample prep and on orbit sample analysis. Coupled that with scientist astronauts that we could rapidly iterate on our science and make progress more quickly, much like we do in laboratories on the ground. So serious is a new initiative this for this year and we're excited about that. Things that we're staying the same is in the previous last year we chose to focus areas. To put most more of our resources into one is quantum understanding. You know, the nature of the universe at the quantum level is going to be important as we all know in technologies and we have BPS have an instrument up on space station right now the cold atom lab. And so we are have deployed and put more funding on to advancing the science capabilities of that instrument on space station and upgrading it to enable new regimes of science. And our other area is thriving in deep space and this is understanding how biology interacts in deep space. And this means low in microgravity or partial gravity pulled with the radiation that we're going to be experiencing and our humans will be experiencing on the moon and as we go into Mars. So those are two areas that we're continuing as well as we are continuing to sustain our core capabilities and our other disciplines within biology and physical sciences while we wait for the Decadal survey that will be out this summer. They will further guide us on how to prioritize our portfolio. Thanks so much Diane. Last we have John Gagosian, the division director for the joint agency satellite. Great. Thank you Karen and please Karen. Can you confirm? Can you hear me? We can. Thank you. All right. Excellent. Thank you. Good morning from Denver where I'm attending that goes our summit. And I'd like to share everybody what we're doing in FY 24 in jazz D. We are actually the arm of headquarters that executes development of space systems for Noah, our partner agency. We do it on a reimbursable basis. So you're not going to see our budget in the overview that Holly presented. It comes from the department of commerce. We're excited about FY 24 when we're going to launch the final of the four satellite series in goes our program. That's goes you and it's going to contain actually an exciting new chronographs to provide imaging direct imaging of the solar corona. We're also going to continue integration and test us with all one will complete integration and test of JPSS three and put it into storage. Also, we'll be formulating our three new programs that we are putting together with Noah. Geo Exo, which is the successor to goes our space weather next, which is a successor to Swift O L one. And then neon, which is both the successor to JPSS, but we'll also be going some in parallel with it, providing some complimentary capabilities in the 2030s. Part of that is the quick sounder mission, which represents an innovative rapid development approach to be able to take advantage of the latest technology. And I'll turn it back over. Thank you. Thank you so much. We are going to try to do as many questions as we can. The way I'm going to work on that is to combine a number of them and also try to get to as many divisions as we can. So right up there at the top is SMD's plans for the geo physical dynamic constellation as well as several questions along the way for whether it's a priority to fly GDC with dynamic as well as what was going to happen with the proposals recently submitted. So first up, Nikki Fox, and then we'll toss to Edwards. Sure. Yeah, I wanted to take the SMD plans. And so, you know, just to, to confirm that SMD supports all of the missions in all of the divisions. Unfortunately, sometimes we have budget constraints and it means that we cannot do everything that we want to do. And some hard decisions have to be made. And you can believe this was the hardest decision that I had to make. And so we still support the Geo space dynamics constellation. We are really grateful to our colleagues that are serving in on the decadal panels right now. And we've heard from them tremendous support for the GDC mission. As Peg noted, we are, we are working hard on it in FY 23. We are looking at what a pause will mean in FY 24, and then determining what steps we can take to get the, the, the mission as, as the question says back on track. We're excited. We have all of the science instruments selected. We have the interdisciplinary science teams selected. We have a lot of interest from international collaborators in the mission. And so we intend to use our time in FY 24 to sort of really work on this collaborative nature and get ready to be, be ready to implement the mission. Peg, would you like to add anything? Thanks, Nikki. You covered. Exactly the point I was going to make on that question. All right. Next up is more sample return. There are a number of questions. I was going to answer the other questions. Sorry. So the question related to, is it still a priority to fly GDC and dynamic together? The answer is absolutely. NASA's formulation of dynamic requires the GDC measurements and the plan that was described in the dynamic community announcement was aligned with the GDC schedule at the time. We, as we move forward, we're going to work on keeping them regarding the RFP for the spacecraft, which was another question. We, it is managed by Goddard Space Flight Center procurement and we're keeping in close communication with them regarding the proposal evaluation process that is currently underway. It's a high priority topic that is being worked in the plans for the proposed pause. We don't have any information to release on that at this time, but we will make announcements at the earliest and most appropriate time at the moment that source evaluation board process is still underway. Sorry about cutting you off earlier. Now we will go on to questions about Mars sample return again, grouping together for Jeff Gremlin questions about the budget and how that affects the rest of the SMD portfolio. And specific you posted in the. The specific question there are several, but is the Mars sample return budget, the more increases are expected and does that threaten other other missions within SMD. Yeah, so I appreciate the question. Of course. I explained we're in formulation and that means we're, we're doing the things to understand our. Our design we're doing analysis work. We're doing the design work to to understand each of the element designs. And then, of course, it's not just the the element designs themselves. It's the, the complex operational. Concept that ties them all together. Remember, all of these things coordinate and make the architecture to both launch, pick up the samples and return them to earth safely happen. So we're doing the work that our processes, you know, demand of us and in formulation to get our arms around ultimately the mission cost beyond doing that work to to understand this before we go to confirmation. You know, we're living in different times. I think everybody understands that than we were say 5 or 10 years ago. The supply chain aspects have changed and how that impacts us perhaps more than other missions as we're in the process of letting lots of. Long lead contracts and we're seeing growth in long lead times, which means we're having to execute contracts earlier. We're seeing differences coming back in and cost beyond what we've experienced in the past or beyond what our estimates suggest they should cost and our supplier base is contracted. And of course, on top of that, there's also inflation. So we're seeing impacts across the board and those are a part of what we're seeing in the cost of the program as we move forward. As Nikki explained, where we have done more on sample return, I think that any SMD program to date to get our arms around what it should cost through independent review. We began that process in pre phase a by bringing an independent review board. And then of course, the other thing we did is we stood up the agency's independent standing review board for the mission concept review at the beginning of phase a and we've been using independent costs and schedule estimates during the process, including prior to our KDP be activity and we will are going to set up another independent review board to go and look at all of the things I've described before we make a commitment. At KDP be again KDP or KDPC again KDPC is where we established the programs cost and schedule commitments. Let's see. And of course, the intent of all this is to get the stable cost estimates before we go to confirmation. All right. Thank you so much. Moving on again, grouping some questions together about Veritas, its budget and what is next steps are for that, including whether or not we'll be having a discovery program and a new frontiers program announcement of opportunity when those will be. So Laurie glaze. Yeah, thank you so much Karen. And before I start talking about some responses to the Veritas questions, I just want to state that the decision to delay Veritas was gut wrenching has been remains that way. I know there's a lot of concern in the community about the future Veritas and I want everyone to know that the SMD put an enormous amount of thought into that decision and that it was not made lightly. So as we talk about the budget before I talk directly to where we are with budget for Veritas. Let me just remind folks where we were leading up to the psyche independent review board assessment when psyche was delayed last fall. The planetary science division has absorbed over the last few years, significant COVID related costs for several of our missions. We're talking in the hundreds of millions of dollars that were absorbed. And yet even with that, we're able to keep our missions on schedule as far as Mars 2020 Lucy Dart. So significant successes there, even with those additional COVID impacts. We've also seen phase e increases on every mission that's gone to launch that we've absorbed within the program. So that we can get back the incredible science from the missions that we're launching. And you've already heard from Jeff specifics for long lead challenges on increased costs due to inflation. These are happening across the board. We're absorbing those as well and all of our missions that are in development. And then in the last fiscal year and in fiscal year 2022 that Veritas was selected in late 21 fiscal year 21 along with the other discovery mission Da Vinci. The plan for the fiscal year 2022, our appropriation actually ended up being about 80 million less than what the planning budget was that we were using. And so we absorbed that as well. And the bottom line of all of that, the reason why I'm bringing all of that up is that the resiliency within our budget has been exhausted. There's not a lot of reserves last to turn to when the decision was made to delay Veritas in the fall. As it was delayed in part as a planetary mission at JPL still very early in its formulation phase. So that was when the decision was made to push it out a little bit further into 2031 for that launch. With the expectation that that progress is going to be made at JPL on responding to some of those independent review board findings. And hopefully the resources and personnel and workforce availability will be there. We'll have an improved situation when we restart when we restart Veritas. But at the time when we made the decision and I wanted to say I have every confidence PL is going to do well on addressing all of those findings. But we made the decision in recognizing that we have the opportunity in the budget planning cycle for fiscal year 2025, which is underway right now. We have the opportunity to lay in a restart plan for Veritas. The funding that was in the budget previously for Veritas was reallocated to other activities in the portfolio. And I want to be clear. They did not go to MSR. I get that question frequently. Did it go to pay for MSR? The money for MSR is over and above. So it did not come from Veritas. And I want to say that as we go forward, we are requesting a budget profile from the Veritas project that targets the 2031 launch so that we can work that into our fiscal year 2025 and out year budget planning. So just wanted to be clear about that. There's questions about the value of maintaining bridge funding to support to provide support for collaborations with international partners. I really understand the value of that investment. I know the team have done a good job of justifying the need. Unfortunately, the funding in fiscal year 23 and 24 has been reallocated as I already mentioned and is not available for that. And then the last question about discovery and new frontiers. I've been talking with the community through the various analysis and assessment groups as well as through the planetary advisory committee and the support for Veritas is very, very clear. And certainly I have a strong priority myself for Veritas as well. It's a strong interest in the science that mission can do. But as a mission that was competitively selected and has been noted was not delayed owing to anything that was caused by the project themselves. There is a priority for trying to get them back on track. So I've mentioned this in public before I'll say it again here. I said it last week at LPSC. We will likely need to postpone the next discovery opportunity and likely simplex as well in order to to make it happen that we can get Veritas back on track. So I want people to be aware that that is a place where we may have to take some flexibility on how long the delay would be to discovery. I'm not going to go out on a limb right at this moment, but we will look through that at the through this fiscal year 25 budget planning cycle. There's also a question about New Frontiers. It actually says New Frontiers 6. They probably mean New Frontiers 5 as I said before still on track for release in November. We are moving that forward with the expectation that that mission goes into implementation in several years from now. And so we have opportunities to make sure budgets are in place and that workforce is available at all the various centers and implementing organizations. And I'll stop there. Hopefully that addresses the questions. All right, I look, I am conscious that we are currently out of time for this town hall. I do not feel that it's fair because we have not got to most of your questions. So I'm going to ask Karen to schedule a follow on hour. We can't do it right now, obviously, but a follow on hour in the next few days to week to answer the rest of the questions. We're happy to go five minutes over today. And I would like to ask Diane to please address the BPS question in that five minutes. But as I say, please, we will come back and we will also the balance of these questions. I'm sorry that we ran out of time today. So, do you have the question in front of you? The questions and there are several are about the size of the BPS budget and what that means in terms of the commitment to BPS and what is capable of doing. Okay, so yeah, so one of the questions that I've seen earlier was specifically addressing the US leadership in low earth orbit research as we move from the ISS era into a commercial Leo destinations era. So right now is actually the time that we should be building the payload and the facilities and capabilities to be ready for that. So we're really BPS finds itself at an inflection point right now. So there are others out there that have space stations and for example, China, and we want to maintain our leadership in that area in low earth orbit research. And so, and also remain the partner of choice. So it's, we've initiated the program for serious by issuing to RFIs. And what some might not know is that we are highly leveraged. So our $85 million basically pays for the samples and the science management on ISS. But ISS is a $3 billion program that pays for the facility development, sustaining engineering maintenance operations. All of that needs to be paid for in the commercial Leo destination. Destinations era. And so we're optimistic that our decision makers will factor this in as we move forward and we'll have an agency solution that will enable BPS to be an anchor tenant in in the future of low earth orbit research platforms. Thank you, Diane and Karen. You wanted to hit the oceans question. Yeah, thank you so much. So there's a question about the earth science commitment to ocean science. And I just wanted to mention that when we talk about the earth system observatory, folks have noticed that there isn't a major ocean mission in there. And there's a really good reason for that. It's because the decadal survey team presumed completion of the program of record, which includes two incredible ocean missions SWAT, which just launched in December and PACE, which will launch in about a year from now. And really, in many ways, we could think of those two ocean missions as the foundation upon which the rest of the ESO gets built. Those two missions will do for physical oceanography and ocean biology, what the web telescope did as compared to Hubble. It's it's that much of an advancement. It represents a $2 billion investment just about. And then I'll also mention and watch this space because we'll be releasing the first light images of SWAT in the coming days. And then one last point, which is we did just recently confirm the the instrument and science associated with the glimmer mission, which will likewise contribute to the evolution of ocean biology over the course of the diurnal cycle in geostationary orbit. So really excited about our ocean, ocean instruments and missions and science. Thanks. Thank you, Karen. And I'm going to ask Mark Plampin if you would like to address any of the astro. I want to make sure at least each community is being chatted to so go ahead please talk. Sure. So there's a question asking, does his budget enable APD to formally start the Great Observatories maturation program this year? And my answer to that is that we've developed a strategy to implement the Decadal recommendation for the Great Observatories. Some of the things that we're doing this in this budget are extending the large mirror technology program that started in 2017 and has just finished. We're also adjusting the emphasis of our completed technology programs to really focus on the requirements for this decade's future great observatory, the habitable world's observatory. And at the same time, we're also doing things in the program offices like developing technology road maps. So while we do not have yet directed go map technology development funds, we are putting in place all the structure and getting started with programs that we can execute right now. And of course, we're also doing precursor science programs this year. All right, thanks. Thanks, Mark. I do want to apologize again that we are out of time and reinforce that we will come back with another live answer session. The IO document will remain open. So if you have more questions or you want to vote them up, please, please do. And I just want to finish with a thought that, you know, it's really easy to focus on the things that we don't have in the budget. But I do think it is we do need to step back and look at all the amazing things we do have in the budget. We have, you know, over $8 billion in the SMD portfolio. Everybody wants to do everything we are in a constrained budget and it just means that we cannot do everything that everybody wants to do. We use our decadals to prioritize them. Of course, sometimes even the decadal prioritizations take a hit because of budget budget priorities and and and a constrained budget ceiling. But I really do remember that we are stronger when we work together as a community. This is something that I think the heliophysics community has done very well over the last few years of really grouping and and presenting as a heliophysics community. I hope they continue to do that. And I hope that all of the communities in the SMD family will also stand together and just really celebrate the amazing stuff that we have in the SMD portfolio. So thanks for that, Karen. We're finished. Thank you. Stand by. There will be postings of this. What we did today at science dot NASA dot gov and stand by for their answer session. Thank you so much.