 I'm Greg Haldoloma with the NASA Headquarters Office of Communications and One Skin Welcome. With us today we have Dr. Thomas Urbukin, the Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA. Michael Neu, the Deputy Associate Administrator for Research. Paul Hertz, who is our Director of the Astrophysics Division. Craig Kundrow, the Director of the Biological and Physical Sciences Division. Karen St. Germain, Director of our Earth Science Division. Burns, the Deputy Associate Administrator of Exploration. The Director of the Neuropysics Division. And Laurie Glaze, who is the Director of our Planetary Science Mission. And with that we'll kick it off to Dr. Zbukin. Hey, Greg, everybody. It's Thomas, Sir Bukin. Now, Greg, I just want to tell you you were fading in and out a little bit from my end. So please interrupt me or text me if I'm fading in and out. I'm trying to get close to the microphone just to be sure. So I'm really glad to be leading the team here, our science leadership team, and do this town hall update. It's part of a commitment we may have made to the community at large that as we're in this situation, in this unique situation that we keep you up to date. And just let you know where we are. We try, of course, to answer every question that we can, but there's a lot of questions you're going to notice that we're still learning a lot about and that we will have to, not because we don't want to talk about it, just because we don't know, we'll have to differ. So that's what I want to say up from now. I apologize. I just, for whatever reason, something is stuck in my throat. But before I start today, I want to acknowledge that this is a unique situation that we have in our world, in our lives. On the one hand, we struggle with an invisible virus whose impact is more than visible to us. It's a virus that has impacted our entire life and how we do work. It's something that makes us refocus and kind of ask us what is important in our lives. It's something that sometimes got us closer to our families, sometimes created stresses in our entire environment. It's something that we're all struggling with and we want to talk about it as we go forward during this briefing. On the other hand, there's another issue that's going on on the outdoors in other lives in all of our lives. Whether or not we have protested or spoken up in any way, there's the world in which we live in as a reflection on all of us. But of course, in science, we strive to rise to the bar of human potential to create on wonder, to generate discovery and understanding, inspire the next generation. And we do this across borders and with colleagues of all races and all backgrounds and all characteristics. We're proud of that. But I'm concerned that our sometimes tightly insulated community is not doing enough that we are not doing enough that I am not doing enough. What we are doing to ensure that the pipeline of young students coming behind us and to carry our work and to make their giant leaps that may or may, whether or not they look different than us, whether that these people look like the nation and the world. What we are doing, and not just saying but doing, to actively welcome people, to appreciate and encourage all of our colleagues to make space at the table for new talent and perspectives, for women of people of different gender, for people of color outside our doors at times, even now there's violence. And many of my colleagues who are Black have expressed their troubled thoughts with me. They have told me stories that I never knew about and I learned only in the last few weeks. Do we value them truly? Black lives matter. It's not just a slogan. It's something that we have to embrace and as a community and as a nation. And I know in my own life, if I look back and find instances where I could have done better, I worry about those. It takes my sleep. But today, I have charged myself and our national leadership team to be proactive. I want to make a commitment here on behalf of all of us that we want to find ways to make a difference more than we have in the past. I want people of every color to see themselves in our science program. We fail if that's not the case. We are not where we want to be. To see role models and to find a welcome in a collaborative culture is what we want to commit ourselves to. I want to just really tell you that we spend a lot of time in our team. And even though there's not a lot of slides on that right now, I just want to tell you that I personally wanted to put that ahead of this presentation because of the importance that we give it. So with that, what I'd like to do is go to slide two, which gives you a summary of what you're going to see as we go through this presentation. It's our bottom line up from, which is the new guidance and policies have been developed regarding RNA due to COVID-19. This is a commitment we made in a presentation like this three or so months ago. The policy is now posted. We're going to talk about it. There's a presidential proclamation of visa policies related to COVID-19. That's very recent. NASA, I want to tell you, is in regular contact with the State Department. The Department of Homeland Security to better understand these policies and the potential impacts of these policies to our collaborative projects and programs will update the community as we learn more. That's where we are today. Of course, there's more details that we have and we're also talking to universities. I think now the last two days I've been on the phone with five universities trying to understand how it affects there. Of course, we're looking at our own NASA workforce where we have our own responsibility also. Our missions are continuing to make progress and we are assessing cost and schedule impact as well as portfolio impacts of these missions. We're going to talk to you about it. And Mars 2020 Perseverance is launched no earlier than July 30 with a launch window extended to August 15. We're going to talk to you. And then in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, NASA, ESA and JAXA created a joint COVID-19 Earth Observation dashboard. It's one of those things where really in this COVID situation, we're coming together as one as a science community, just like the ideals that I outlined earlier. I received a congressional approval for biological and physical sciences division to join SMD effective July 19, 2020. Next slide, please. I always talk about opportunities that we have to join our team. So first of all, I want to thank all of you who have applied to the recent program scientists or program executive announcements that we've talked about in previous such town halls. The announcement of assistant deputy associate administrator for research opens July 20 and closes on July 27. We really want to draw your attention to that. The research leadership and the policies of the type that we just talked about in the context of diversity and race and so forth are the responsibility in part of the deputy associate administrator for research. And of course, Michael knew who's the associate administrator for research. Worthcoming announcements for program analyst positions and a resource management division. I want to draw your attention to it. That's something that you're interested in. And also announcements for program executives and the program of deputy associate administrator of programs focused on enterprise protection and cybersecurity part of the world in which we're doing missions. And this is we need people who really understand both that, but also understand science and missions as we go forward. All of these announcements at their due time will be later this summer will be released on usahjobs.gov. If you follow me on Twitter or other NASA, NASA accounts, you will see that. And I just want to tell you I always post on Twitter when these things come up. And I want to make sure that you see it and you see that as an opportunity. Next slide. Let me just tell you three colleagues who have joined the team. Holly Dane is the director of research management division. So at least the money woman, so to say, the person, the most important person most of you will never work with just because she is kind of working behind the scenes. But all of the funds, whether it's a research grant or mission funds to a center or to a university or anywhere else goes through Holly and her team. And we're just so proud for her being at the helm of with with an organization with Kate Wolfe and so many of the colleagues that have done so much good work already in the past with us. Jeff Kramling is the new Mars sample return program director who is joining us and we're really looking forward to working with him a very experienced manager with a lot of, you know, successes to his name with Tiedras and many other missions and Kirsten Petrie, who's the executive officer and and basically has a lot of direct responsibility for both my schedule and many of the kind of activities that we're implementing. It's going to think of it like a chief of staff without kind of staff responsibility. That's what Kirsten is doing for us. So I just want to welcome all three of them. And I'm just so glad they're there to making our team better. Next slide please. So the organization here, as always, we will split. But I will talk about three topics. The first one is updates and research and analysis. So the next one is mission impacts. And the next one, the final one is division highlights. Of course, we want to spend a little time on questions and dance. So what I want to do is ask for the next slide and just going to kick it off and then hand it over to Michael Neu. So I told you before and I want to tell you now that we recognize that our research and analysis grants are supporting a large number of colleagues all over the United States, whether they're within NASA centers, whether they're within university, whether they're non for-profit research organizations. We, some of those, like I used to be a half tenure, some of them are soft money people. And then there's a whole group that is part of the educational process that is that is their early career researchers, of course, that in several years will be in fact the leaders that are going to be there and take over for us. And then that brings science forward more. And so as we look at this, the first thing I want to tell you is that we've made a commitment for all of science to basically continue the research and analysis program, as best we can, because if we stop the program, what happens, of course, that our soft money researchers, no matter where they are, have an issue, right? Because having been that in the past also, right? We, you know, you want to be able to propose and win more. But also, I want to make sure, and that's really the only bullet I'm going to brief on this one, is that we want to be sure that this epidemic So good afternoon, everybody. As Thomas said on my commune, we've massively derailed the career search of leaders. So we've been saying now for a while that we don't want to talk about that. How are we doing this? And so we've been thinking and talking about how to deal with this for quite a while. We've come up with a three-pronged strategy that we think will help. The first prong of the strategy is a science policy directive number 36, which has been signed by Thomas and is available on the SARA webpage, on the how-to section, no, sorry, on the tips section, the library, the library and tips section. It basically lays out the priorities for funding, funded extensions and augmentation requests from our existing grantees. We've been using some flexibilities given to us by the Office of Management and Budget to tell our grantees to continue paying graduate students and postdocs and soft money people through this pandemic, even if no work is getting done. And we realize that when people start being able to go back to their labs, they're going to still need the money to fund their people. And they're probably going to need money to restart their labs or restock on PPE, personal protective equipment, that they donated to local first responders. So starting October 1st, grantees will be able to apply for extensions, funded extensions, extra money, but we're going to be funding them with a set of priorities. Highest priority will be supporting graduate students and postdocs to complete their 10 years. The second highest priority will be to support soft money early career researchers. The final priority will be everything else. We will be creating a solicitation in our Inspires proposal submission and management system and people will be able to propose to it. If you look at that policy, it also shows you the structure of the proposal and the budget that we want to see. That's available, again, at the Sauer website. I can put the URL of it into, I guess, the presenter chat or something soon. The second prong of our approach involves the NASA postdoctoral program. We currently support about 124 or 125 fellows and we are hoping to expand that by 50% over the next few months. Some of those expanded slots will be for new hires, new people. Some will be to handle 30 years and fourth years of existing postdocs. Finally, we are working with our NASA centers to support and fund additional, that's wrong, sorry, to fund additional term limited, not computer science, term limited hires. These positions will be focused on additional training and career growth. They'll probably last between two and six years, more likely two to four years. How many of these positions will be available? We don't know yet. We are in discussions with the centers about this right now. Now, it's important to keep in mind that all three of these actions, as important as they are, come from the same pot of money that we use to fund all of our new awards for fiscal year 21. The exact size of our commitment is not clear yet, although it's probably going to be between 10 and 20% of the new award money we put out into the community. That also means that the amount of money we put out into the community will be reduced by that 10 to 20%. If you've got questions, comments, suggestions, please send them to me. My email address is on the screen, michael.h.new at nasa.gov. Next slide, please. So some updates about the RNA program. We've been adjusting our proposal processes to accommodate the changes due to the pandemic. Since March 13, we've moved 18 to 20 step two deadlines, one of which we moved twice, and two solicitations have been canceled, although only one of those solicitations was canceled due to COVID. So the MoMA participating scientist program was canceled because the mission itself is not launching when we thought it was, so we'll recycle it and we'll offer it again when the mission launches. The Eclipse program would have involved travel to South America, which at this time is not possible. We've made some, oh, sorry, yes. Right now, all of our new panels are virtual and they'll be continuing virtually at least until September. We'll make a final decision in a few weeks about how much further to extend, although I wouldn't be surprised if it extended through at least January. We are all also moving forward with our dual anonymous peer review pilot study. Several guest observer programs for our great observatories have already met and done their evaluations using dual anonymous and we're very excited that we'll be able to try this out for some other grants programs. We've been making adjustments to the nasa postdoctoral program already to respond to COVID. We've instituted remote onboarding, meaning that if you, if a nasa postdoctoral fellow does not need to actually physically step onto a NASA center, you can turn on, start their fellowship without them having to come in. We've also been encouraging advisors that if their fellow can't do the proposed project because of access issues, that they could realign the project to something that maybe the person could do without having to come on to the center. We have a whole list of them and there's a link there to the NPP policy page that lists all the things we've changed. We're also paying a lot of attention to keep, to the changing availability of the so-called J1 research scholar visa. This is the visa type that all of our nasa postdoctoral program fellows are on and at the moment the state department has closed all of its, all of its visa services overseas. This is going to impact possibly our current, the current round actually will impact the current round of NPP selections and probably the round after that at least. Next slide. So a little bit about these virtual reviews. I've been talking to program officers and by all accounts, the virtual panel solicitations reviews seem to be going pretty well. NRES, NASA Research and Education Support Services, which is the company that supports our panels, has really stepped up to the challenge and provided a really effective set of tools. The one hole in that right now is that some of our programs like to have their peer reviewers vote in a secret ballot and there really isn't quite a great way to do that yet. We are recruiting for panels have actually seemed to be about the same or even better. Some of that is because we're not asking people to leave their homes and travel has always been a bit oppressive to some people, certainly for me. We've learned some lessons. Practice sessions with panelists with program officers well before the meeting seems to really help. Group work time though seems quite limited to about four hours a day and even during those four hours a day more short breaks are needed to give people a little bit of relief. The combination of those means that our peer review panels may run longer than they used to. As I said before they're probably going to continue doing this at least until September likely to the end of the year and a bunch of program officers have actually really liked this and would like to continue doing at least partially virtual panels once health concerns no longer dictate that we have virtual patents. Next slide and now I'll turn it back over to Thomas to talk about our missions. Thanks so much Michael and remind you that you can ask questions of course or upload questions that are already in the hopper there using the URL. That's there I want to talk about mission impacts and the first slide which is slide number 10 that I want to talk about is one that you've seen before except the colors are changing somewhat. Those are the status the current status of our agency by center. Some of you work in these centers or in contract or contractors of these centers some of them some of you have projects that are of course associated with these centers and what you see is that the majority of the centers are now in stage three and of course four being the most stringent and kind of a smaller number is if you want more like it was before. Of course we have developed agency like guidance that takes into account guidelines provided by the White House Office of Personnel Management and management of budget but also you know some of the local you know guidance and that that basically says how we can come you know over time come back to work on site which is really the only work that is really affected by this so many of us if not most of us work remotely within the agency and as I know also many of my our university friends and colleagues. Next slide of course shows a chart again what stage three and four means for reference. I just want to remind you that even in stage two for example as we hopefully move there over time you know you see that there's certain limitations certain elements that require more thought than normally would have been such as only mission critical travel and so forth the kind of discussion that Michael just had on review panels for example falls in that category which is why his statement was so clear about for the time being and probably through the end of the year really staying within that remote mode as we learn and then frankly keep some of the reviews or some of the processes in a remote mode just because it's better in some cases. The next slide tells you where what the missions are in development that are currently having onsite work so in red of course are the work at stage four which involves Mars 2020 Perseverance and James Webb in green are missions that are approved to work at various levels they don't work exactly basically in all cases don't work at the level that they would have if there was no COVID that there's approved work on site that is going forward and and we heard already from the ones in yellow you know in yellow color here that they expect to submit work for approval remember that the only thing that we're talking about here are is work onsite the NASA facilities many of these missions have work that are elsewhere in companies elsewhere that that of course work with local guidance and otherwise on what is safe for them to work remind everybody that the priorities are remaining the same which is the safety of the individuals is a critical most important driver followed of course by the mission priorities which is what we're communicating here. Next slide gives you two images that on the left of course you see a tip of a rocket that that includes a very precious rover that that we hope to launch end of this month just so excited for that team that really you know done just amazing work just heroic work and of living after the name of this important mission called Perseverance that is really reflected there right now of course we're working very closely between the United Launch Alliance and the launch services program which is organized in the human you know directorate human exploration directorate and with its new leader Catty leaders are really just so excited to work with her and we've you know spent quite some time together even on this one just really a team is moving forward towards launch you're so excited you know the other side you see Jane's web again just the magnitude of that telescope which is quite remarkable you see the two humans there doing work on these cherry pickers and and really getting this spacecraft ready for its next steps also there progress has been made of course at a at a slower speed just like we've said before we're in the middle of a schedule assessment and really trying to figure out how we how that how we will be tell the Europeans about when we're ready to launch because also this one is really moving towards launch just the one just like the one on the on the left side both of them are truly historic steps in our programs and we're committed to both of them and I just really want to thank the teams and everybody who's associated with both perseverance but also with the James Webb Space Telescope for their important commitment that we saw value next slide gives you a few bullets on it which is of course there's a number of impacts that that we see in our projects and programs due to travel constraints due to the supply chain you know there may be some companies that are ready to to go to work but they missing parts that either could not be shipped internationally or or locally because they're they're not being produced at the level that they should so it's the supply chain it's just a really important part we're learning a lot about this the disruptions of onsite work of the NASA center of course and elsewhere is affecting a constant schedule and of course we do not want to forget that as we're in these you know different family environments family care needs are affecting our lives in a varying matter and you know we were looking at publications that are coming out the work that's coming out we recognize for example that there's whether it's emissions or and also in the RNA program gender differences that really matter and they're part of our discussion so I thank you for just want to thank you also here for your feedback that many of you are providing because it helps us do a better job so these issues will continue to be challenging for the restart and and we are of course meeting with the center directors and also with company leaders frankly to evolve the process and and of course with the center director of how we ramp work back up it's really clear that the center directors are responsible for the safety of their people and none of us has pushed our center directors to really work more faster than they would want to we want to make sure that we really all do our jobs it's our job at headquarters to enable to empower and to open up doors and that's what we're in a business for it's the center directors jobs with their teams to really organize their work they'll do so safely and making sure that that again the priorities that outlined earlier are being followed so some of these schedule and cost impacts of course will be absorbed by the so-called agency baseline commitment you know it's the number that we're telling everybody or often to congress and so forth that also include headquarters reserves right we refer to it you know internally to NASA lovingly as MDU FE and schedule reserves we have these scopes so not all missions in face CD will exceed their agency baseline commitment or the number and that that we thought we could do it but all our missions are expected to have some increases that otherwise would not you know wouldn't have been there and in some cases they may delay future missions under you know depending on of course both monies available we recognize that the money being available is of course the discussion that's going on in congress typically still assessing the impacts that will continue to refine before commitments or alterations to the to the agency baseline commitment we really need to understand that and address it at the portfolio level so in other words of course is you know some missions we can just move to the right a little bit you know as we if the schedule gets delayed and some missions and especially those that have planetary windows that's not possible in an easy fashion right and so because if you miss the window we really miss it right so it's years later or many months later that the similar opportunity arises so everything needs to be done with that in mind so you know just be aware that most cost growth will not just be in this year that will be beyond this year and so this is really a multi-year issue that we're going to work with with all of our stakeholders including the community and and I just want to tell you that we are kind of the like cycle reviews so the kind of key decision points have continued and to virtually report so we're getting better at this just like all of you there are certain things that were more struggling more than others but we're getting better at it so so basically what I want to do is go to the next slide and introduce the next slide again introduce the first division directors here in the abc of our division so astrophysics poll why don't you take over okay thank you Thomas can you confirm you can hear me okay I can hear you so a couple highlights from astrophysics recently we tested a new hybrid gyro mode on the Hubble space telescope this and it was a great success we're now back to our standard three gyro mode but this provides yet another tool of robustness for whatever future performance issues we might have with the gyros on Hubble so that we can operate Hubble quite a long way into the future as Thomas mentioned the James Webb space telescope is fully assembled out of north of Grumman and over the last couple of weeks there was a pre-environmental review for the web to prepare us for the final environmental testing for the entire observatory and this picture in the upper right is the web space telescope fully folded up as it will be for launch and so this next set of environmental tests will be on the observatory in its launch configuration we're going to vibrate and the observatory is subjected to the acoustic environment that simulates a launch environment to make sure that it is designed exactly right for surviving the launch the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope our next great observatory following web formerly known as WFIRST and we're so pleased we had a chance to name it at this point in time it has restarted work at both JPL and Goddard and in the picture here in the middle is the primary mirror for the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope for which we have already completed figuring and coding our next small explorer is xv the imaging x-ray polarimetry explorer and they had to stop work at Marshall space flight center when it was shut down at stage four for covid but now that we have restarted selected tasks at the NASA centers one of those is the completing the assembly and testing of the mirror assemblies for the xv and that is going on and the next step will be integrating those mirrors as well as the Italian provided detectors into the spacecraft the balloon program is assessing the possibility for a fall campaign in Fort Sumner New Mexico in light of the quite serious covid situation in the southwest United States we've already canceled the Antarctic campaign for the winter because it was not logistically possible for NASA to get the the balloons the payloads and all the people it takes to carry out a campaign to Antarctica with the logistical limitations under the covid pandemic and then one quick science update in the bottom right is a picture picture is our cartoon of a magnet are magnetars are highly magnetized neutron stars we only know of a few of them and this one is only 240 years old and yet it has a magnetic field 10 to 14 on high the Earth's magnetic field and so this as with all things in astrophysics most things we observe are are quite old when we get a chance to observe something very early after its formation it tells us a lot about the physics that went on here that's it for me thanks right good afternoon I'm Craig Kugel I'm a student of the Division of Electric for Biological and Physical Sciences as Thomas said we're living from the human exploration and operations mission record to SMD where they target date with July 19th so in Biological and Physical Sciences to vaccination to take with a blood rush you take two extra systems to the space and there's a space that environment to interrogate physical biological system with reduced gravity or radiation in the world's top areas we have a two-fold mission and it's to pioneer scientific discovery in your enable exploration and the range of biological and physical systems we study is quite broad ranges from microbes to animals for thermal physics services to food and combustion looking at the decadence on a decadent survey state in the task this will be our second decadent survey for the morning and I'm just going to proceed our state in the task should be completed hopefully wait the summer or whatever the time and be able to kick back to our decadence we're going to have two examples of our research to illustrate the some of them have a kind of new aspect we have a code one laboratory and a new national space station which by the way is a primary research platform for not our only one and Cal as we call it has been doing producing most Einstein kind of states and supporting that research and has a large number of firsts including creating other geometry kind of states that cannot be achieved underground and we're very proud of that last month the chapter in nature was a nature and going to be covered as an example of something that we use our research but also enables exploration we have a approval study looking at the interaction between the crew microbiome and the microbiome of the ISS environment itself the world's environment and take on the scenarios the crew microbiome transfers over to the vehicle and this is very important to note these kinds of things for you know to hear more about the system the microbiome of the exchange and the levels so with that I will hand over to Karen Sanchez for highlights from both sides as covid represents both a challenge to executing our programs but also it produced a unique set of conditions of global musician that gave us the opportunity to study some things differently than we've ever been able to before so I'll give you some examples from both so in that latter category some of you may be familiar with the space apps program it's an annual hackathon in its ninth year where we it's always been virtual where we we issue challenge globally invites series of challenges and invite people to participate this year in May we issued we had a special covid 19 edition of the space apps hackathon we had participation from over 150 countries and those were folks who were addressing challenges from you know identifying changes in human activity environmental changes and even improving predictive capability by using primarily space-based earth printing data so so that was a huge success and we we believe we'll be announcing winners for those for that activity in late July maybe early August one of our one of our premier international partnership missions the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich which is a an altimetry mission which will extend our sea surface height observations into their fourth decade is is approaching launch and despite the covid challenges we've been able to continue with the testing and launch preparation for for that system and we are anticipating launching in November of this year airborne campaigns as you as you might imagine are a little bit of a challenge in our significant challenge in the covid 19 era here so and many of our campaigns had to stand down and that largely has to do with the fact that we couldn't execute those campaigns safely however one campaign of very high interest because it in part because it's been ongoing for about 11 years now is operation ice bridge which provided airborne observations linking the providing the bridge the data bridge between the original ice that mission which which ended in 2009 and the launch and activation of ice that too and so that we were able to successfully execute the last flight of the ice bridge mission before we had to stand down with covid flip side of that is our student airborne research program start program that's an ongoing program it's been ongoing for oh i think it's in its 12th year it involves something in the neighborhood of 30 students every year in airborne research and the idea is an educational program to give them hands-on experience this year we had 28 students about and coming from 28 institutions about half of those were new institutions to the program again as i mentioned it's intended to provide to provide hands-on experience this year though because most of the uh because the flights have been put on hold that activity has been ongoing largely virtually with students collecting samples and participating remotely next chart please the other uh the other major news is uh is nasa in partnership with isa and jacksa have produced an international covid dashboard where we we've joined forces to use the collective scientific power of earth observations from satellites collected by all of the agencies to look for um and provide access to changes that are visible from space uh through the they're visible via the whole collection of earth-observing platforms so this this dashboard provides access integrated access to satellite data and analytic tools to allow interested users to to explore what the data says and and use it for for their own purposes we're seeing changes in air and water quality climate change climate changes regional and economic changes in economic activity changes in agriculture and so forth so the original version was released on june 25th you can see in the graphic here in the upper left the uh the web address it's it's live and we're going to continue to update and uh and add content and capability to this website over the coming months as the global response to covid 19 evolves in time and that is it for me we'll hand it over to sio thank you karen all right karen my name is dave burns i support esio esio stands for exploration science strategy and integration office a key part of our strategy is to start using commercial providers to deliver scientific payloads to learn uh that project is called clips which is commercial lunar payload services which is the first key delivery that we'd like to announce as part of this town hall we've had a few uh before this but uh we selected astrobiota to deliver viper to the moon in late 23 viper stands for the volatiles investigating color exploration rover this is a particularly challenging mission because of the mass of the world it's over 450 kilograms as well as the location of delivery which is one of the poles so it indicates the strength of clips and the fact that the program is starting to mature uh we're also working with the space technology and human exploration and operations mission directorates on creating an integrated manifest to get the best value for the government and to help the participants and clips fill out their manifest um we recently held the first lunar communications and navigation user forum angelo mulito is our our co-chair for that this is key because we want to create a single architecture for communication at the moon instead of having multiple networks for human as well as robotic exploration we're using the next prism call to identify technologies as well as instruments scientific instruments and we want to place in the moon prism stands for payloads and research investigations on the surface of the moon it's a very flexible um technique of getting payloads identified for clips and funded for clips finally i wanted to mention that the lunar reconnaissance orbiter marked its 11th year in lunar orbit on the 23rd of june this is incredible lro is really important for both human exploration as well as robotic exploration of the moon i want to identify the picture in the lower right hand um what's taken with a new type of imaging technique uh where we're able to get high resolution by having a longer slew angle look when we're making an observation that's all i have today thank you like to next introduce teleophysics lots of exciting things going on in heliophysics the first one of course is our upcoming um of venus for parka solar probe so parka recently completed the fifth perihelion path um and is now speeding on towards venus to be the third gravity assist so at the next our perihelion will be even closer to the sun than we have been yet also fly by it's a very very low altitude fly by of venus and we're very grateful to our astrophysics colleagues who assisted us with getting the kek observatory um online to observe uh venus as we're flying by taking in 50 days with a lot of exciting things coming up with parka um obviously all the spacecraft and instruments remain nominal and we're literally getting down the data from both the fourth and fifth perihelion um very happy to uh celebrate with solar orbiter and our european colleagues as um they uh they also reached their first perihelion uh last month um the heliospheric imager uh solar solar high opened its doors and took its first light image and it also passed right through the iron tail of a comet atlas at the end of may so uh but it had four instruments turned on and uh they they were able to uh to do that encounter so that's very exciting icon also congratulations to icon they made a very big splash at sida i had tremendous things from the community about all the great science that was presented already and the team did a big release of the first eight months of their data um became public in june also uh sounding markets um we did start to begin some instrument calibration activities and they did reopen the machine shop um however we still have a lot of missions that um have been postponed and are going into next year um so there are six that are that are either delayed or have been put on holds due to covid uh the team is meeting very very regularly to discuss this in fact there was actually um a uh sounding rocket working group meeting this week where a lot of discussion on the impact of covid and how you know how best to keep our workforce safe as our highest priority and also um be able to get science back into orbit um uh thomas also noted uh that we we did go back to work um with that we've got a permission to return to work on for our homey's payload and i noticed that one of the questions on the website was regarding the future selections for the gateway so i thought i'd just hit it um while i had the chart up um as i reported at the agu meeting uh last fall um helio had been invited to develop a lunar space environment capability with uh helo md and that included energetic particle and solar winds wind sensor package uh which had been rated very highly to fly on the first um module the the requirement was to deliver the instrument package by november of 2021 and so unfortunately we're very sad but unfortunately there was no way that we could have sufficient time to be able to do a traditional solicitation so we had to choose really whether to take advantage of it which would require directing it or to forgo the opportunity however we only directed the instrument procurement itself um and we will be fully competing the science team to support homey's and then in the coming weeks we're going to release an rfi to get uh community input on space weather instruments and spacecraft to populate a pipeline for future opportunities so this is obviously wider than just the gateway but um it will be able to take advantage of any right share opportunities um and uh you know so so we're going to make sure that we're in a much better position moving forward to take advantage of these quick turnaround requests like her needs um with full community participation so with that i will hand it over to planetary great thank you nicky and hopefully everyone can hear me if you can't please speak up uh so um thomas mentioned um at the very top of this briefing uh that the march 2020 perseverance launch has now been rescheduled uh to for the launch window to open now on july 30th there were some issues with processing of the launch vehicle but um i want to say that the the team down at kennedy space center including both uh united launch alliance and the launch service um program lsp and ula uh really did a tremendous job they've just worked um incredibly hard to resolve the issues that um were identified and we are now back on schedule um for the integration of the uh spacecraft onto the launch vehicle we um completed the mating of the spacecraft um uh to the launch vehicle um this week and we're continuing to move forward um on schedule towards um that launch window that opens on july 30th um i think he also mentioned that the launch window um has been extended a little bit past where we originally uh had identified uh as as is originally through august fifth it's now extended through august 15th um and we've accomplished that by reducing the amount of time each day so instead of two hours it starts out at two hours um and then towards the end it begins to decrease um to about 30 minutes each day but we're we're pleased that we have um a healthy launch window there and we look forward to that launch coming up in a couple weeks for the planetary science and astrobiology decadal survey uh there was a lot of uh concern within the community about the ability to get the white papers submitted within the the deadlines that had been stated um uh under the current circumstances with all the additional stresses in everybody's life um and the decadal co-chairs uh got together and uh and determined that there was a way to stagger and allow some uh some later due dates for the the white papers and so the uh science white paper uh deadline was extended from july fourth july 15th a mission concept uh white papers are now due august 15th and all other white papers including state of the profession papers will be due september 15th um this does make the schedule very tight for the survey and for those panels uh but we wanted to make sure that we get the um get those ideas in and that's the most important thing about these white papers is getting the ideas in uh make sure that those ideas are are available for the the panels to consider some other big things coming up for planetary science um osiris rex successfully completed their um an early rehearsal of the tag event which will be the touch and go sample retrieval that's going to happen in the fall they have one more rehearsal coming up then that point rehearsal will happen in august and then the the actual tag event of sample collection will occur in october and so we're looking forward to that that's moving along as well um david burns just mentioned uh that astrobotic was recently selected as the clips provider to deliver the viper rover of course the viper rover itself is being developed and managed from within planetary science we're very excited to have this added to our portfolio it's going to do some amazing science at the moon and we're very excited about working with seo for that clips delivery um the dart mission the double asteroid redirection test mission uh is targeting um the uh the asteroid diddymos which is greek for twin um and just recently uh we named uh it was named the the moon of diddymos which is where we're actually going to impact is the small 160 meter moon of diddymos it was given an official name of dimorphos which is the greek for of two forms and so this is a great pairing of of of names for that binary asteroid system and we're looking forward to that launch in 2021 on rna topics i just wanted to touch on a couple things of note to our community the dart participating scientist program has got some proposals due very soon pay attention to those deadlines we want to make sure we have the opportunities to add science to the dart mission prior to launch i also wanted to mention that we are developing within planetary science improved and automated compliance checking capabilities and so for our community to please pay attention to that to the compliance issues um we are going to let people know at first uh that we are identifying these using these um these automated methods and then what our intention is to hopefully uh make those uh tools available so you can actually test your own proposals before they come in i also wanted to point out some delays to some of the upcoming due dates in planetary just so people are aware for dolly p dark matisse and new frontiers data analysis program uh we we're trying to accommodate uh uh everyone's needs as far as being able to prepare the proposals but also being able to spread out the uh the review panels as as michael new was saying sometimes they're taking a bit longer than than they did in the past so we're trying to accommodate all of those things and with that i'll hand it back to thomas and to gray okay thanks lori thanks to all the presenters for reading some questions now wanted to download the charts to add to your vote up questions that i always also below that in the notes section uh diversity question why should a student of color want to work at nasa as a scientist if current employees don't have a chance for a black side and from a contingent employee to permanent uh thomas do you want to take a break uh i think um you know at the beginning i i uh told you already what i feel about this issue and i'm gonna repeat it now uh you know i i think this is a very good question right and i think there's a lot of proof points student might that may look at and basically say there's a lot of proof points why it's not possible and i think what i'd like a student like that to consider is i know that both in our team but also many of the people who are looking here are kind of are part of this town hall i want to help that student too just like me i'm the first in my family to graduate and i did not do this on my own it's because other people have helped i want to also tell that student that for me uh and for all of us i believe i speak for the whole team and i'm gonna just open it up at the back of my answer for our colleagues we want to do better and we want to uh really uh help what we uh what is our responsibility we recognize that for that student uh to really uh answer that the right way kind of to there's many people many organizations that need to need to in fact help there but we're committed to to helping that student with the best we we can and so so so that's all i want to say at this moment in time but i just want to ask our friends and colleagues within the SMD team if anybody wants to chime in as well because i think you all know we've we've been spending quite a lot of time on that in discussions and we have different perspectives that of course come together to help us all but i just want to open it up this is lori um and i'll say a couple words um and i i we hear you uh and i i agree that there's a problem i think we know there is a problem it's something that needs to be addressed and this is something that as thomas just said we're we're putting a lot of thought into how how can we best approach and move forward and i think one thing we need to hear from is hear from individuals who have seen or experienced uh either discrimination or biases and and help us come up with a solution uh help us understand where the issues are and help us understand how we can we can better move forward to assure that we do have better uh uh representation um and diversity and and across the board at at within nasa fall heard um i i will also say that the student is correct and that uh the points that he or she made are exactly right and those are the standards we should be held to and if we can't change those change the facts that are stated in that uh question then we have failed and those are the standards we should be held to yeah and this is necky i struggled with this question a lot um thinking about it overnight and and paul is right they they are the statistics they are terrible statistics um we should be held against those and you know all i can say is it's time to change the statistics and so if you if you want to come and work at guttard please come and work at guttard and help us change the statistics okay thanks everybody and just to continue with this theme just a little bit more the next but the appearance of their flicks or nasa they qualified i don't know if anybody wants to address that perhaps so i really apologize gray i did not fully understand the question and uh if somebody else did please answer uh and uh perhaps somebody can put the question in the chat box uh that i could repeat it uh perhaps or somebody i just really i'm sorry i really apologize i did not hear it i'll i'll try again it's about the appearance of quick hiring uh scientific candidates that helps uh screen out minority candidates because other people are already pre-selected so somebody highly qualified i get in yeah i mean again larius two observation that that many of us have experienced too right those of us who kind of came in from the outside right this is part of the the the cycle that we need to break and that we want to break you know when we're talking about uh when we are talking about kind of uh you know whether it's in human act you know in human resources like you know career building whether it's within universities whether it's within uh nasa centers right it's really about creating the right processes um is uh uh you know to to make sure that the right decisions are being made uh the right decisions being really uh that that everybody has a fair uh chance to do so i want to tell you we have many of the decisions and many of the processes that we've done at headquarters we've really utilized kind of uh insights from uh from social sciences on how to flatten the field actively in our decision processes and and we want to make sure that we do that across all of smd that we can do even better but uh we also want to make sure that we do that across all of nasa and i really want to ask our uh friends and colleagues in universities to really uh you know just like we're very much looking at ourselves to uh to uh look at themselves so so again also here i want to open it up quickly uh for uh for our uh friends and colleagues within the team so i'll just comment um that you know we're actually one thing we are trying to do is be very much much more thoughtful about exactly who are on our interview panel to ensure that we are making sure what well to ensure that we don't have that kind of thing where it's the same people hiring the same people and so um certainly for julio as we put together our interview panels for our upcoming program scientist opportunities we are reaching out to people out even outside high quarters to sit on the panels to ensure that we don't have that kind of thing and that bias in panels moving forward and i know that the other divisions are doing the same thing okay our next question people can hear me is uh about what is our response to the recent order that makes it near contractor and have smd and nasa mission and objective of that michael do you want to perhaps take the uh first step at this if you don't mind i think it's about the executive order and how we're currently handling uh kind of the impacts of that i think you had it in your slide uh michael do you want to just add another uh level of detail like sure so we are working with the appropriate parts of the other parts of the government to let them know about how these decisions are impacting us and our ability to achieve our missions and goals and move science forward um i that's about what we can do at this point some of these executive orders will produce without any free peer review so we are doing the best we can that that's all i okay uh next up thank you michael next up for nicky or peg is there timeline for announcement of the heliophysics mid-ex selections we're working on it very very hard as we speak um i it is it is going to be very soon okay thank you all right uh next up a clipper uh windmulled nasa make clipper gravity radio science team selections uh team was supposed to be announced in january and so now uh thank you gray as lori and yes and we we do know that that was a bit delayed and apologies for that but i know that the selection process has completed it's just a matter of finishing up the paperwork so that we can make that announcement should be very close all right thank you lori uh it's now we have a question about uh postdoctoral fellows uh wondering if nasa leadership would be receptive to an effort to utilize fellow's positions to improve inclusivity and equity in the field i think michael should take a start Thomas this question is about the Hubble Fellowship Program my mistake Paul of course that's your shot go ahead sorry yeah uh so uh yes nasa leadership is receptive to such an effort we are um very pleased and proud of our fellows and the initiative and leadership they take to address issues that they think are important for the future of our field and for uh ensuring that we have uh the best people working in astrophysics i want to compliment the fellows for putting together the initiative to improve to make sure that all fellows in the future have access to benefits that are appropriate for people just starting their career starting their families uh and start we have put in place that policy to make sure that all fellows are offered employee status in the future so uh yes i i i credit the fellows with that initiative and i'm certainly open to future initiatives okay thanks paul uh craig this one is going to be uh or possibly thomas and folks but it's about uh transition dps biology and biological physical sciences and how that change will impact the directorate and uh aren't some of those uh biological and physical about other portfolios in smd i'm happy to take the first crack please call yes absolutely yep um yeah the questioner correctly identifies there's a lot of touch points between uh the systems of interest in bps and uh in smd and uh to first approximation bps takes terrestrial systems and studies them in the spaceflight environment and smd is studying things already in the spaceflight environment um but then when you dig a little deeper take um in the space biology realm uh there's a lot of uh common interest when it comes to astrobiology and planetary protection and space biologies uh microbiology program so we're all interested in uh different phases of um uh the origins of life and the evolution and the distribution and so there are a lot of common questions that we can be working on and on the fundamental side like physical sciences for example on the fundamental physics there are some questions of mutual interest uh like with astrophysics where astrophysics is using the universe as the detector and to observe phenomena and fundamental physics is using laboratory scale things so we're very enthusiastic about exploring synergies between bps and the other smd divisions do you mind if i just add to that that correct and that is that uh that i just want to tell on behalf of all of our entire team you know how excited we are to have uh biological and physical sciences and science um we uh see that the most important benefit of that uh is to really um for this important science discipline to kind of benefit from both the infrastructure that we have to really support that yet the pursuit of science but also precisely of what the the person who was answering asking the question is implying is we do believe just like uh the disciplines that are in our uh portfolio now we want to figure out where the interfaces are and where uh where in fact uh uh work can occur uh when uh that now with biological and physical sciences there that before that uh not uh was not natural or did not uh easily occur because of the organizational boundaries uh there's multiple uh places where such discussions can happen and i believe some of the discussions are already happening at this moment in time i would say uh in smd we're all in the learning uh phase we're uh listened to a number of um uh very exciting presentations already some of them on both the Einstein condensate some of them on uh you know uh biological systems some of them on kind of uh uh systems that uh really uh frankly uh you know are kind of you know fundamental physics uh just like the both the Einstein condensates and and and uh really at the boundary of of of what we what we know today so it's just that in some cases intersecting with uh disciplines such as heliophysics uh disciplines such as astrobiology which lori already talked about of course both uh in uh in astrophysics also worried about so i just kind of want to say how excited we are uh to have you there uh and how committed we are to really learn about this uh important disciplines as we go forward the most important part of that also just like uh with uh lori of course is and i think you talked about it crack is is the engagement of the academies to really help us get a strong strategic guidance that really helps us focus that discipline and in fact demands that the the discipline overall i do the benefit of all so so i'm really excited to have you on board back to you great okay uh uh for release of the next discovery a o thanks great um so this is lori um so we just uh at the beginning of this calendar year announced uh the uh step one selections for the last discovery a o which was in 2019 and um we expect those four teams that were selected under that uh step one process they're going through their phase a's right now they'll complete their concept study reports um around the november timeframe um and then the selection process for the last round of discovery we expect to be uh announced in the spring uh so for the next discovery a o the intention of course is to offer discovery uh the a o every four to five years with an intention to hopefully select two in each opportunity um that's our our plan um so on that kind of a timeline you could expect the next discovery a o in about the 2023 to 2024 timeframe okay i think this one's going to be for you too lori uh when do you expect these guidelines for new frontiers five yes i know we're yeah we're all anxiously awaiting this information i know uh so i had asked the committee on astrobiology and planetary science our national academy academy standing committee caps to take a look at the uh recommended uh missions that were recommended in the decadal survey and in the midterm to take a look at those target destinations relative to other missions that have been selected through discovery um and other processes and and try and provide us with some additional guidelines on what should be offered in the next new frontiers a o and the caps had a a full meeting on this earlier in the spring lots of discussion about the various destinations they've written their report it's being finalized i expect that information be made public in the next couple of weeks um and so we'll have that information and that will help guide us towards what goes into the guidelines we hope to release those guidelines as quickly as possible um so the people know what to expect for new frontiers five and uh the the date that we've been giving for the release of the next new frontiers a o is in i believe around the october 2022 time frame i believe that still holds okay thanks this is going to be our last question we've uh run a little over and we appreciate all the interest in the questions uh how is natha planning to continue to support parents with child care and work during the pandemic i hope you want to take that as a first step because i think much of it relates to uh to the rna program i assume and then uh uh we can talk uh we can talk about the other aspects go ahead sure um so the the things we we have been doing are with regard to peer review panels we have been doing them virtually and uh having shorter hours we've been trying to be sensitive to when proposal due dates are coming and so we've seen we've moved quite a few of them giving more people more time uh and and we've always allowed grantees to bequest hiatus of funding or to move their funding around if they need to so if you have to spend time at home and you're not going to spend down your grant on time you're willing to make adjustments um i'm not really a hundred percent certain what kind of things that will be being asked beyond that so i would almost put person by the email me about this so we could actually have a more fuller discussion yeah thanks so much michael and uh and what i'm going to just add add to this one is is really a simple statement and that is continue to talk to us that the respective division directors to michael to all of us about those issues let's just all remind ourselves that you know the situation that we're encountering right now is new and is different so so so as we go forward we want to learn and make the best choices uh that we can and then frankly we will not be shy to change decisions uh that we have talked about or that we intend to go if if it's going to be in any way inadvertently kind of uh uh uh you know impacting our our value colleagues uh in a in a given group here i also want to add that uh that needless to say uh some of the choices that we're making here with the research and analysis programs but also in missions of course are kind of choices between values right what we'd like to do is continue to uh because of what i said earlier and i think michael talked about that we'd like to continue the program as best we can at the same time we also want to make sure that we give enough time uh for for uh people to uh have an even uh chance at at at doing these proposals and so forth so we have to figure out how to balance these sometimes seemingly opposing uh criteria that were uh there the best way we can do that is again if you give us your input we have standing committees use those committees contact us directly and that's just what i want to say if i have somebody else wanted to add something yes thomas this is paul uh as thomas mentioned we are willing to change our mind uh when uh these impacts are brought to our attention in astrophysics we had previously announced that we would uh not run uh the data analysis program next year but make twice as many selections this year we thought that would cut down on the total amount of work and give some people some more certainty about when their future funding was coming but we were informed that this was very hard on people with children at home who might not have time to write a proposal this year but we're looking forward to writing proposal next year and so we did reverse ourselves and that was based on community input about the impact our our well-meaning choice had had and so please contact us when there are things that we can do uh to uh to adjust in order to support the community all right well i want to thank everybody for coming today and to all of our presenters that's all we have today but uh look forward to another one of these scheduled town halls in a few weeks and i just want to have anything to close okay what i want to uh tell you is thanks to all of you our part of our community uh we understand and i i think our entire leadership understands how important the entire community is for us to be successful and as a science program i really want to thank uh first the team that has been speaking here and also the the good people that support them i just want you to know how hard that that team is working to make sure that we do our best and on certain times and times where or sometimes just like you we feel a little bit overwhelmed also and and and i'm just really grateful to that team we're coming together and exceeding so many times what is expected of them yes there's many questions that were being asked where we don't have strong answers and we recognize that and we want to do better i want to also thank all of you who are a part of that discussion for helping us to do that assume positive intent and let's figure out how we can make impact in science we are all about you know figuring out a better future and and a different kind of kind of goal that we can achieve that many people think are science fiction at the beginning and making that reality so we want to use that same kind of approach and kind of the best that teams can bring to bear diverse teams can bring to bear to achieve progress in those areas also so i actually want to thank you for it and a great thanks for leading this this meeting here thanks that's all from me appreciate it thank you everybody this will conclude our town hall