 Hi, Karen, can you. Just for us again, I says Karen, change your name coming from Baltimore. We volume turned up for you. Yep. Everything is maxed on max on this. I've maxed volume on there. It's not in the settings. Like the audio is fine. For people who are online, so it does sound like it's just an issue in the room. So, a phone number with the dialogue scene. And the, the audio looks good for everybody online. So it's just in the room. Okay, nice. Thanks, Karen. Hello, everybody, and welcome. Thanks for your patience as we get started. Just a couple minutes here after 1 o'clock. Thank you for joining us today for NASA's science town hall with Nikki Fox, the associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters here in Washington, D.C. We also have members of the science leadership team with us today as well. We're going to share updates about the budget and to answer your questions in general. In addition to Nikki, we have Sandra Connelly, the deputy associate administrator for the science mission director. We have Michael knew the deputy associate administrator for research Karen Flynn, deputy associate administrator for management. Joel curves the deputy associate administrator for exploration. Eric, I am said deputy division director of planetary science division mark clamping the director of astrophysics division, Joe Westlake, the director of the physics division, John, the director of the joint agency, satellite division. Karen, St. Germain director of the earth science division and Lisa carnell director of the biological and physical sciences division. The town hall is being recorded and the recording and slides will be made available later today at science.nasa.gov. If you have a question that you haven't already asked in our system, we're going to drop that link in the chat here. If you haven't already had a chance to do that, we will be able to look at those and answer them during the Q and a portion. You can submit a question and you can vote questions up with that. I'll hand off to Nikki. Thanks so much, Karen. And I want to welcome everybody to the town hall today and also to thank you for your time. I know hours are precious and we hope to, to make sure that we give you a good hours worth of material. It's been really great. I appreciated seeing a lot of the community at the AGU meeting in San Francisco in December. It feels like it was months and months ago now, but it was really nice to see everyone there. I was sad that I missed being able to go to the double AS meeting in New Orleans, but I did. It did at least get to share a greeting with the astrophysics community. So I look forward to seeing them very soon. And this week we are actually, I even know Karen is coming live from there, but we are up at the American meteorological society meeting. I was up there Monday to talk space weather. And I'm looking forward to being with Karen tomorrow for earth science. So it's, it's just great to actually get to interact with the community. And please, as always, if you see your SMD leadership team out in the community, please come talk to us, ask us your questions. If we can't answer them immediately, we'll get you those answers and get back to you. So please, please do keep engaging with us. One thing, a new member of our leadership team, we want to welcome Dr. Joe Westlake, who joined us as the heliophysics division director, and you will be hearing from him in a few moments. And as always, an enormous, enormous thank you from me personally, but from the whole SMD family to the amazing Peg loose for the incredible job she did once again as the acting division director. Between me, my leaving and Joe's arrival. Also, in case you missed it, just some agency updates, the, the one and only Bob Cabana did retire at the end of December. And so obviously we miss him as our associate administrator, but we're really delighted to have him free, who has now taken over the role of the for the agency. So we're looking forward to building very strong relationships, building on all the, the good work we had with Bob Cabana and then building, you know, continuing that with, with Jim free. And he came from the exploration systems development missions director at ESDMD, and we are also delighted that his, his deputy from ESDMD, Kathy Kerner has stepped up to be the AA for ESDMD. So lots of change going on there. And finally, maybe we have congratulations to Kurt Vogel or Spuds as we fondly call him here. Who has been named the associate administrator for the space technology directorate. So really, really great to have a new leadership team. We're really looking forward again to working with Kathy with ESDMD with Spuds in space technology and of course under Jim free. So, you know, I do kind of want to talk about some difficult things. Obviously we realize we want to talk about the budget and we realize that the budget is an incredibly stressful activity for all of us right now. We are very stressed here awaiting, you know, we hope an appropriation and being able to actually move forward and implement that, but we really do understand the stress that it puts on the community. No matter what your role is in the, in the scientific community, you are impacted by our budget. And so we really do, we do empathize with the stress in the community over this. You know, we are sort of still midway through the annual 24 appropriations process. Just a couple of weeks ago, the president signed another continuing resolution. And NASA is continually is currently sorry, covered by that continuing resolution until March 8th. So there is a lot of uncertainty about FY 24, you know, and coupled with sort of where we are in the FY 25 budget process. It's making it difficult to know where we're going to land in many areas. And so, you know, I want to remind everybody that this is the time to really talk about NASA science and the importance of NASA science. You know, NASA science delivers every day, every week, every month, every year, NASA science delivers. We put amazing science out into the community. No matter what division, what, what area, what, you know, what your sort of vision is. Everybody appreciates, I think, what NASA science does, whether it's marvelling at images from the James Webb telescope, whether it is looking at the amazing critical research we do in climate, whether it is marvelling at a total solar eclipse that we'll be able to do in April, you know, whether it is like rejoicing at the samples coming back from an asteroid or whether it is the critical research we do on the International Space Station. Everything we do is amazing, and we do it every single day. And I really want to ask you as a community to talk not just about the challenges that we face moving forward, but the amazing successes that we have every day in NASA science. You know, and in case you have, in case you need a reminder of some of the amazing things that we have done in 2023, you know, we had amazing launches, we launched tropics, little CubeSats doing amazing, amazing hurricane and tornado critical, you know, weather, severe weather prediction. We launched Tempo, looking at the air purity over the entire US. We had launches in astrophysics, both with chrism and with Euclid, psyche going to take us to a metal world for the very first time, and heliophysics first payload going to the ISS with awe. Not only that, we had samples coming back from an asteroid with a Cyrus Rex. We had Lucy flying by Dinkanesh and letting us see what we did, what we could never have imagined from the models. You know, we got closer and closer to the sun with the mighty Parker solar probe. We witnessed that annular eclipse. We launched new experiments to the ISS with a wonderful biological and physical sciences. They also received their decadal, which is really, really exciting. You know, we have, I can't even begin to find work to describe the stunning images that come back from web, and as we move forward to advance our next great observatories. And, you know, we continue to do amazing, amazing science with our Earth System Observatory. You know, obviously looking forward to adding and doing yet more incredible synergy, but look at the incredible stuff that we have done in 2023, and I could go on and on and on. Trust me, I can go on and on and on about what we did in 2023, but we have an amazing 2024. You know, science never sleeps. NASA science never sleeps. We will continue to do amazing things in 2024. We've got several new missions that will launch this year, getting ready to launch PACE next week. Go PACE. We are just a few months after that launching NISAR, so two very critical Earth Science missions that are going to add to the synergy of what we do in Earth Science. We have Prefire. We have Europa Clipper going to an ocean world. I hope you will signed up to message in a bottle to put your names on Europa Clipper. And we have Escapade going to Mars. We also have more clips, missions, launches. We have intuitive machines coming up next month, and we have Lunar Trailblazer. You know, all these amazing missions that are getting ready to launch in 2024. I'm also really excited to see the continuation of our open science. We put out our TOPS training, and I really encourage everyone to take that training. You even get a fancy badge. I keep seeing people. I love seeing people tweet that they've got the TOPS badge because they've done the training. And we have impending selections in our SMD bridge program. And the other thing I'm excited about for 2024 is, as many of you know, we had an independent review board looking at our Mars Sampa return program. And right now we have an independent review team kind of looking, studying and going through all of the recommendations of the IRB and then putting together a response. The team is extremely busy right now. They've looked at all of these findings that came from the IRB, and they're targeting to give us, or to give me, actually, the responses and their plan forward, the recommendations later in sort of March, April time of 2024. So obviously, I'm not going to go into any more detail today about what the response team is doing, because we actually do need to give them the space and the ability to really do an independent review. And so, you know, we will be coming back as soon as that report is ready. We'll be coming back and reporting out to the whole community about the plans for Mars Sampa return. You know, and again, they're looking at all the technical, all the architectural findings and all the recommendations, and we're doing that they're in very close conjunction with our ESA partners. So it is an amazing time. Again, I want to, you know, really remind you as a community, NASA science does great things and please talk about the really great things that we do. And if I haven't actually stolen all of the division director's thunder, do we I'm sure there's yet more exciting things for each of the division directors to talk about. So Karen, I will throw it back to you. Absolutely. We're about to pass to all the division directors to each give a quick one minute summary of recent highlights. And I will just remind everybody that after that we're going to be doing the questions. We do ask the questions be polite and we reserve the right to rephrase them or edit them as we vote them up. So just know that that can happen and it has not had to happen so far. We appreciate everybody adhering to those rules. All right, with that, we are going to our planetary division first. Great. Thanks Karen. So start with Cyrus Rex the tag Sam is open. Yes. So this is the touch and go sample acquisition mechanisms is where the sample is is housed. And we already have set about 70 grams of material confirmed and it looks like there's a substantial amount more inside the tag Sam. So stay tuned for the final mass. So we're excited about that. Huge thank you to the ingenuity helicopter and the entire ingenuity team. It had its 72nd flight and unfortunately it was his last one. So the rotor blades are damaged so it will no longer be able to fly. However, we still have communication with the helicopter and we are collecting data from the helicopter so we can learn more about the final flight and how we may be able to use that information into the future. And then lastly, I'll mention the psyche mission has completed its checkout. Spacecraft is operating nominally and excitingly the deep space optical calm or desock experiment is working well. So great stuff happening in planetary. Yeah, you're next Karen. You can start. Right. Great. Hi, everybody. I am coming to you from the American meteorological society conference in Baltimore right now. Our earth science division highlight is in Nikki mentioned this is pace. I'll be going almost straight from Baltimore down to Kennedy for the launch next Tuesday. The plankton aerosol cloud and ocean ecosystem mission or pace is a trailblazer for for many reasons. You all know that we live on a water planet some 70% of the ocean of the Earth's surface is covered by ocean. Well, the observations and science from pace will profoundly advance our understanding our knowledge of how the oceans work and their role in the climate cycle. And this is especially, especially exciting when we combine pace data with data from SWAT, which we launched a little more than a year ago. We'll be ushering in a new golden era in ocean science just as exciting as what we're doing is how we're doing it. Nikki mentioned open science and of course, pace is an open source science mission with early adopters and applications identified at the very onset of the mission concept. And this means that pace will develop deliver discovery and actionable science that can be put to immediate use by our coastal communities and industries that are facing some very real challenges posed by climate change in our coastal communities every day. So this is the ultimate earth science to action mission. And with that, I'll hand over to Lisa for BPS. Thanks Karen and, you know, go pace. So speaking of, you know, excitement and 2024 what a way to kick it off here at Kennedy Space Center with the entire BPS team. We just launched NG 20 yesterday, full of science and supplies for the resupply mission and BPS had three payloads on board, looking at a lot of biological sciences, including plant and microbe interactions, alterations to bacteria from space flight. We were also looking at bone marrow stromal cells and the influence of space flight and how that could help us understand those mechanisms associated with bone loss. And not only did we have an incredible launch but earlier this month. I was able to visit the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland, Ohio, where they released and had a ribbon cutting ceremony for an exhibit to showcase BPS hardware that's flown to space station. And so now they've made this interactive for the general public to be able to see the NASA exciting research and work that we do. So, and from that I will hand over to Joe Westlake. Thanks Lisa. So for Helio physics 1, I'm really, really excited to join NASA and be a part of this wonderful team. I am super excited about the Helio physics big year, which we're in the middle of it. We have the upcoming total solar eclipse in April, which is a huge activity that's going to engage and touch really almost everywhere across the nation and we've got a great team that's working that really, really excited about that. Solar max, we're coming into solar maximum and we're going to learn a lot at the solar maximum about what's different about the sun and and why our Helio physics and the things that we're doing are so very important. Parker is getting it to its to its point where it's closest to the sun that we've ever been really amazing things. And then we have an exciting year to two years in front of us of upcoming mission launches, escapades, sunrise, tracers, punch, IMAP and Carothers, Hermes and easy. And then we have additional missions in development, Muse, Heliosorm, solar CVST and vigil, and then our four SMEX teams that were just selected. And then of course, on top of all of that we have a wonderful decadal survey that we're looking forward to seeing mid this year. Maybe earlier, that'd be amazing. And we're really excited about what's going to be in that from the community. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mark with Astrophysics. Hi, good afternoon everybody. This last year was a really exciting one for astrophysics. I'm going to just highlight a couple of interesting highlights. We launched QRISM back in last September and QRISM is now operational and returning very high spectral resolution observations. We've seen some of the very first observations showing in full a matter onto super massive black holes and studying the property of hot gas in clusters of galaxies. The data are really spectacular. At the very end of the year, the very last day of the year, we flew the Gusto mission, which is conducting a Terahertz study of stellar life cycle. And that mission is currently entering its third circumnavigation of the Antarctic and will continue to fly, we hope, until the end of February conducting science observations. A habitable worlds observatory start teams so fully formed and meeting and they've also been creating additional working groups which encompass a broad range of science community members within the astrophysics community. And then finally, I'll just say that just yesterday, we got our very first light through the Roman space telescope during its optical testing phase on the ground. So we're really excited to see Roman come together this year. Great. Thanks. Going to John Gagosian next for Joint Agency Satellite Division. Good afternoon, everyone. Like Karen, I'm here at the AMS in Baltimore. We've had a lot of really good meetings with our interagency international and industry partners. The big news is that goes you arrived at Kennedy for a launch in April. It's the last in the goes our series. And it features the first solar chronograph for operational use the C core developed by NRL. After goes, of course, comes a go XO mission, the series of six missions, we've selected two out of the five instruments already. The first launch is in 2032 on the JPSS program, J three and J four are moving forward in their integration. We're also looking forward to the neon program for the future of low Earth orbit. We've awarded the quick sounder spacecraft and operations contract to Swiri. And we've got microwave sounder studies that are underway in the world of space weather. We just completed the integration review for Swifo and we're moving toward the launch in the spring of 25. And finally, I'll mention under the space weather next program, which is a successor to Swifo. The L one series is underway. The instrument solicitations are out for that. And we're also underway for the project to provide a chronograph to the visa vigil mission. Now I'll hand it over to Joel Kearns, our deputy for exploration. Exciting month of lunar. Thanks John. It's been an intense and exciting. January for lunar science and lunar voyages. It started with the successful launch by Vulcan center on the very first year of Vulcan center of astro botics technology paragraph mission one. The first clips initiative on flight. Unfortunately, within a short time after launch, it was found that it was a malfunction and anomaly in the paragraph lander propulsion system. During the and unfortunately it was found that they could not even attempt the landing on the moon. Several of the NASA instruments were operated along with commercial instruments during the orbital mission. And astrobotic technology made the decision to terminate the mission after about 10 days by allowing the spacecraft to re enter the earth's atmosphere and its next pass to earth. We learned a lot about working with our commercial partners during this mission and astrobotic right now is starting their investigation of the anomaly. This was followed on January 19 with the landing of Japan's slim lunar explorer, the moon sniper. This was a successful soft landing and made Japan only the fifth nation in history to have a successful soft landing of the moon. They also learned a number of things to carry out such a challenging endeavor. But we have a laser retro reflector away from NASA on slim and we're looking forward now that LRO has imaged slim on the surface to attempting to glaze that retro reflector as soon as JAXA is ready. And as Nikki said, we're getting ready for the second clips launch attempt by intuitive machines probably in mid February to carry six more NASA instruments to the moon. I will wrap up by saying I want folks to remember that for the eclipse on April 8, you need the moon. Thanks everyone. As I said, such a lot always going on in SMD and I did want to add my thanks. I missed doing this to the entire ingenuity team. I'm going to try not to cry again. I mean, there was not a dry eye I think in SMD when we when we reestablished communications with with ingenuity only to find that it wasn't going to fly again. But an amazing and amazing amazing achievement by the ingenuity team to do what we didn't think was possible to fly a helicopter in 1% of the atmosphere and do it not five times, but 72 and to give us a whole new view of Mars. So I just wanted to add my thanks to the ingenuity team. Sorry, Karen. That's a hard act to follow. But we do have about 25 minutes for questions. So we will start with those and be tossing them around the room vying for first at the top. They've been fighting dueling the top two. But right now it is what is our plans for very tops. So I'll take it and I'll throw to Eric, which is just to remind everybody that we are still waiting for a 24 appropriation and we are awaiting the president's budget for 2025. And so there when when we talk about uncertainty in the budget, we are really doing the best that we can to protect all of our missions so that they can be successful moving forward. But I just want to remind that we do not have budget clarity. Go ahead, Eric. Well, that's a perfect lead in because the reality is that our ability to restart veritas is dependent on the planetary science budget outlook. As well as the workforce availability at JPL. You know, we use our budget planning process at NASA to evaluate both of these factors. And, you know, we're coming to the end of the FY 25 budget planning process with the public release of the president's budget in the coming months. So that will provide us with better clarity on what our ability to to go forward with veritas is. So we really can't make further comments until that budget is out. Thank you so much. Next question is, can we provide an update on some of the larger potential announcements of opportunity for FY 25 looking specifically to Helio Astro or anyone else wants to weigh in. So, Joe and Eric, those are two. Oh, I'm sorry, Joe and Mark was with you. Yeah, I think for for Helio, the answer is pretty straightforward. Relying, of course, on budgetary issues, but also, you know, for the Helio mid X, we're still working towards the fiscal year 25 timeline. And for astrophysics with the same caveat regarding budget, we're currently working towards the smacks they owe in 2025. And if you want, I can add something on discovering your frontiers and simplex. So, again, we are very much dependent as everyone else is on on the budget. But right now our current planning is that we will have a final AO for new frontiers no earlier than 2026 and discovery and simplex probably unlikely that we will have anything in the next couple of years. Thank you so much. Moving on to the next one. It is about our roses proposals. The concern is that they're becoming increasingly prescribed. What can that do to reduce the proposal burden for the PIs. Michael new mantos that to you. Michael, if you think it's coming off on your hand on the side, we're going to need you and try again. Maybe we could go to the next question and come back and give Michael a moment to do a troublesheet. Sounds good. Thanks, Michael. We'll come back to you on that one. The next one is going to be for our new helio director Joe Westlake. What is the status of the space weather pipeline program, the potential ride opportunities for and the progress of its instruments. Yes, so that's great question. Our space weather instrument pipeline, which is a program to basically host space weather instruments on commercial and other space based platforms continues to make progress. Three of the four current instrument development efforts are nearing completion and the instruments are soon going to be placed in storage to a way to ride in space hosted opportunities. And we're hoping to have those three instruments on the shelf this spring. Regarding the potential for flight opportunities. Our space weather team is completed review of the space weather agile platforms for science RFI that collected information about commercial space based platforms. That are interested in hosting these scientific instruments. No specific hosting opportunities have been identified at this time. And our next steps will be to focus on meetings and invited discussions with many of the teams who responded to the swaps RFI. Thanks. Great. Do you want to try Michael again? You want to give a, you want to try it? The question offer roses. Let's see how it works. Great. So it's not your imagination that roses has gotten more complex in the 20 years we've had roses. It's grown in complexity and length tremendously. This year we are starting an effort to try to make. Roses much more usable. For people of all experience levels. So from it. People never post NASA to people who posted NASA for 20 years. We started that process with an RFI request for information that request for information is still open. With you. I can I will put the URL to that RFI in the chat. It basically asks anybody and everybody to tell us what they think could be made simpler in roses. We're going to continue with that process with a series of discussions internal to NASA headquarters. Then to the NASA centers and then ultimately with everybody at conferences and so on. And hopefully we will come back to you in a year or so and be able to describe a new structure for roses that's simpler, clearer. More usable in the sense of usability like software. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, Michael. We had a number of questions about inclusivity, diversity and equity. So I'm going to do that all in one fell swoop. The questions are basically about whether we're going to be publishing a specific staff person with sort of a concern that there is a burden. Sometimes on on the people who are doing science in other ways. If there is not a single person. Yeah, so, I mean, this is an incredibly important topic. I mean, to me personally, but obviously to the agency as a whole is, you know, our efforts around inclusion. And we have an inclusion plan town hall. I want to flag that coming up in mid February. So really hope that you actually join that and ask your questions in the as well in the inclusion town hall as an agency. NASA has an office of diversity and equal opportunity and that leads the diversity and civil rights policies programs and services. And, you know, basically it enables everyone to contribute inclusively and equitably to NASA. In SMD we've modeled our efforts to further this agency core value. And, you know, we're doing it sort of in a very similar fashion to, to, to further the value of safety and inclusivity. And, you know, I want to remind folks, I guess, while I'm on the soapbox that modeling these core values is not relegated to a single person. It is everybody's responsibility to do that. We all need to contribute to modeling these values and behaviors in the work that we each individually do in the work that we lead and the work that we do as a collective team. And we need to do this on a day to day basis because we really want to ensure that we have a safe, inclusive and innovative environment to allow us to do the amazing things that we do in NASA science. I know there was a couple of questions that was one about workload. And so, you know, SMD is invested annually in a support task. So we have contractors working with us since mid 2020. And that really was created to bring sort of the social science and formally train, you know, bring formally trained staff in to lead this effort. And let's see, we also have in the agency and embedded DEIA, they have put that as a portion in everybody's annual performance elements. So for all, all executive and general scheduled supervisors have to actually have an element in there. So it is taken very seriously at the agency level. But I just want to remind everybody that if you want more information about our approach to idea or DEIA, depending how you like to say it, we put the I first because inclusion is where we're focusing. There's, you can find it on the SMD website at science.nasa.gov. And it's a slash about us slash idea if you want to find it directly. But you find all kinds of amazing things on the science.nasa.gov. But the web page has email addresses for members of the community. And so you can contact members of SMD's idea working group. And we encourage you to continue to keep sharing your suggestions and thoughts with everybody. But just a reminder, inclusion town hall mid-February. So please do join us for that. Great. And there was also something about misuse of DEIA and proposals that Michael was going to be wanting to tackle as well. Yeah, thank you Karen. This is a good question because it surfaces I think common misunderstanding across the community. NASA talks about inclusion that is distinct from diversity. And when we ask about inclusion, we're talking about how you are managing your teams. It's really about how do you get a well managed team put together and how do you continue to make that team function well. The other important thing is that while that inspires our proposal system does offer the opportunity for individuals to voluntarily provide demographic data, race, gender, so on. Those data are never ever made available to program officers or selecting officials. So whether or not a team is led by somebody who looks like me or not isn't something that actually actually figures into selections. So the premise of the question about institutions misusing DEIA criteria is a little bit doesn't really understand how we use those data. So there we go. Thank you. Thank you so much, Michael for that one. Moving on, we did have our simple return question about what the concept of an architecture is. I'm going to toss that to Nick. Yeah, so as I noted in the beginning, we are actually not talking in detail about Mars sample return and the work that the independent review team are doing because they are literally in the middle of their deliberations. And we are, you know, waiting for that final report to come out. But, you know, obviously just to address the question when we talk about architecture, we're talking about mission architecture as we do in all of our missions. And, you know, that the way the mission will be actually done, you know, what are the pieces? How do we actually achieve mission success? So it's the same as we do with all of our missions in SMD and indeed all of our missions across the whole agency. So it's the same way that we use architecture in every one of the directorates. Thanks. All right. And back to budgets regarding budgets. The fiscal year 24 is a tight year. It is difficult to predict when the future budgets may be approved. Have there been recent trends comparing SMD's budget to other mission directorate budgets to understand where money is being routed? Yeah, so obviously, yeah, as the question notes, there is a budget uncertainty. We're waiting to find our budgets, et cetera. We are, you know, part of the way through 24 appropriations process. We're eagerly awaiting a 25 presidents budget. But I would, you know, sort of address the fact that if you're looking at trends, you want to look back for, you know, the way the agency has been supporting science in FY 22, FY 23. They were the largest science budgets that we've ever received in the president's budget request for 2024. The NASA science budget was also increased and the largest science budget to date. And so, you know, if you're looking at, obviously, we don't know what's going to come in the appropriation. But in terms of support from the agency, we are seeing, you know, really positive support for science across the agency. Thank you. And moving on to our next question. Totally changing direction. Mark clamping. This one's going to be for you. What is the status of the plan to boost bubble? So, thank you for that question. NASA and SpaceX signed a non reimbursable space act agreement in September 2022 to study the feasibility of a concept to boost Hubble into a higher orbit using SpaceX's dragon spacecraft. That feasibility study has concluded. NASA is now internally evaluating the findings and working to determine our next steps. And we will share further information after that process is complete. I will also note that in December 22, we also issued an RFI seeking interest in demonstrating commercial capabilities to boost the orbit of a satellite. And we received eight responses to that RFI. And those are also currently under review. So the responses I should note to the RFI are not proposals, but rather information for the government to consider as it determines any next steps. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mark. Moving on. How are people recruited and selected for mission independent review boards? What are the conflict of interest rules? And is there anywhere, where, any way we can read anywhere where we can be. Yes, it's going to be ends is going to take that one ends feeling. So, Karen. So what we do is we identify for each new board. What are the expertise level expertise and the kinds of expertise that we need. And then we work with the support contractor to have them identify potential members and to vet them for conflicts of interest. And then they produce a report that out that lays out the proposed members as well as any potential conflicts of interest. And that's reviewed by a civil servant review manager and SMD leadership before we finalize the membership of an independent review board. Thank you so much, Jens. Back to Mark clamping for what is the status of the habitable world's observatory. And when is it planned. So the habitable world's observatory is currently only a mission concept. So, NASA is not yet determined a target launch date. We're right now just beginning the long process of planning and building the habitable world's observatory together with partners in academia and industry and internationally across a number of international space agencies. We'll make sure first of all that we explore a range of options submission architectures and technologies and follow the guidance given to us by the 2021 Decatur survey to mature technologies prior to starting a detailed. Formulation of the actual observatory. We also will incorporate mission lessons learned that we put together from a long history of leadership in space based astronomy and also across our other divisions. So that as we think about building and testing the observatory and its many components, you know, we can do the best possible job in formulating the design and then launching it. And go ahead and keep your mic on. Next one for you as well for NASA astrophysics is the funding per wavelength being tracked specifically. This seems to be a question about whether the high energy wavelengths are are receiving less. So we do not track the funding by wavelength in that way. However, I should say that our priorities of course are always directed primarily to the guidance in the Decatur surveys. But just to give a couple of examples to show that we do maintain. I think very good balance. You know, we currently have 6 missions in operation producing data that address x-ray wavelengths and we have a number of missions in a similar fashion that are addressing gamma ray. Observations right now from very small pioneers and our permissions all the way up to the Fermi observatory as well. So we believe we have a good balance in the firing for reds. You know, we're currently flying gusto, which is a Terahertz observatory and we are currently in the process of just starting to review proposals from the recent probe call, which was directed by the national academies to focus on x-ray and firing for red science concepts. And we will make a down select on the probe in about a year. Thank you. All right, we do have about five minutes left. I am still trying to get as many questions done as possible. But there there may be a little bit of skipping around when we've already touched on certain topics. This one. This one, right? That was the one you wanted. That one. Okay. Oh, okay. All right. Sorry. So we actually are going directly to the next one. Just after I said maybe we're so we are going to still going in order. So the next question is how is NASA messaging to the hill about the impacts of continuing resolutions to the nation concern about the ripple effect to industry and other places around the country. Yeah. And so I would say that NASA is messaging to all of our stakeholders in the way that, you know, the community we hope is also talking about the importance of NASA science. We do obviously realize that the, I mean, I started in my opening remarks of saying we understand the stress that is in the community due to the uncertainty in the budget. We do talk about, you know, the impacts of different budget scenarios. We are doing that. We are talking about about that. We're talking about it with all of our stakeholders. And so, you know, once again, I encourage everyone to educate and to communicate the excitement of NASA science and the importance of what we do here. And also talk about, as I said, the challenges and the impacts of, you know, of your worries. Please don't don't think that it's not everyone's responsibility to really band together as a community and talk about the importance of NASA science. Great. Thank you. Our next question is about the NASA postdoctoral program and a concern that it is trending towards being more elitist through harsh external reviews. I'm going to toss this to Michael new to address. Thanks Karen. So, um, the MPP NASA postdoctoral program and its predecessors going back as far as I can think of has always relied on external reviews as part of the selection process for individuals. I can't comment on whether it's gotten tougher or not. I don't actually see the reviews. However, I will note that the requirements that we ask or the current MPP contractor use when evaluating. Candidates is public is in the original request for proposals that resulted in contract with or you. I will put the link to that RFP request for proposals in the cat and it's publicly available. If somebody thinks there's really something terrible that's happened, they should reach out to. The person could be me or it could be Dr. Erica Alston who's the project program manager for MPP. Thanks. Back to you, Karen. Thank you so much. And now I really am going to try to just get a few more in on on some of the. Topics, I really want to do the fun one from David Grinspoon. I didn't announce at the beginning. He is our lead for astrobiology here in the science mission director at NASA. And the question is, how is the search for life beyond earth go? No, really, I mean, obviously, is my mic on yet? Obviously, we have not found definitive evidence of life beyond earth yet. If we had, we would have been very excited to let you know about it. But we have a number of very promising activities on that quest and their activities that really span across the range of science going on in SMD. The James Webb Space Telescope returning fantastically detailed spectra of exoplanets that is really validating the technique that we plan to use to search for for habitable and inhabited exoplanets. And this is encouraging both for what we might find with JWST, but also for the habitable world's observatory plan that Mark Clampen was speaking to. And we know now that this technique works of finding out what's in these exoplanet atmospheres. And that is going to tell us if some of these other solar systems in our galaxy are inhabited. In our own solar system, of course, we have rovers on Mars. The Perseverance rover is searching a previously habitable lake environment and collecting samples, which we're later going to return to earth. And later this year, we're going to be launching the Europa Clipper mission, which will characterize Jupiter's moon Europa and assess its habitability. A few years down the line, we're going to be launching Dragonfly to Titan. So it's a very exciting time in the search for life. I can tell you, I can't tell you when we're going to find it, but I can tell you that if there's life in our solar system and in our galaxy that we are undertaking activities that will will reveal it to us. Thank you so much. I'm just going to squeeze in a couple more. Our next one is will the science mission director it encourage scientists to do more outreach that highlights the amazing science they're doing every day. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, please go do it, go do it. One of the exciting things about what we do in NASA science is it's inspiring and it's inspiring every day. And in every single division in in SMD, we are doing incredible science. And we absolutely want people going out talking about it with us. There's lots of great opportunities coming up with the eclipse while you can't have the eclipse without the moon. Thank you, Joel. You can't have it without the sun either. So there's plenty of opportunities to go do that. Plus you see that you see all kinds of things in the in the in the day sky. When the sun disappears as there's a great time to talk about planetary sun is a star to its great time to talk about astrophysics and of course all the amazing things that you would see from the ISS where we're doing. Guess what amazing science. So please use all of these, these things to go out and talk about the incredible science we do. If you like asteroids, my goodness, there's so much to talk about. If you like anything to do, I mean, Karen already highlighted all the amazing stuff going on in Earth, but the partnership between SWAT, PACE and the NICE are coming on. Let's talk about all the amazing things that we do in in in SMD and talk about them loud and proud. All right, we do want to leave just a few minutes here for our division directors to give an exciting upcoming highlight things they're looking forward to. We're going to do sort of a speed round. I also want to acknowledge that Wanda Peters is in the room who I failed to acknowledge at the very beginning. She's our deputy associate administrator for programs and she's here listening and was also available for questions. But with that, we're going to go in. We do it in the reverse order of how we how we did before. So that's going to my mic. Yeah, your mic is on. We're going to Joel Kerns for SEO. Intuitive Machines Clips Launch in February, Firefly Aerospace Clips Launch end of summer. We anticipate if Intuitive Machines first launch is successful in February that their second one will be later on the year. It will actually go to the year very near the South Pole, the Moon, Chackable Connecting Ridge. As Nikki said, Lunar Trailblazer is getting finished. Viper is making great progress again to go to the South Pole in the future. And the geology team that will guide the astronauts on the Artemis 3 mission has been brought on board. Lots of things in 2024. Great. And it would have been John Gagosian for Jazz D, but he unfortunately had to leave a little earlier. So we are moving on to Astro-Physics. Mark. Thank you. So I think for Astro-Physics, we're looking forward to, you know, lots of exciting new results on the Web Space Telescope. It just keeps on giving and giving. I'm also especially looking forward this year to new time domain and multi-messenger science results, especially at this critical period right now when the LIGO Gravitational Wave Detector is operational. And of course, I'm really looking forward, as I said earlier, to seeing the Roman Telescope start to come together this year as a weekend integration of the observatory. All right. And for Helio-Physics, it is all Eclipse all the time. April 8th is the upcoming total solar eclipse, so please stay tuned and go witness an amazing event. Great. Tossing to Lisa Carnell for Bar of the International Sciences. Great. Thanks. I think we're all looking forward to that eclipse, Joe. For BPS, we continue working on our decadal survey goals and working right now here at Kennedy Space Center doing high-level road mapping activities. We'll be talking more about our plans and where we are in the status at the upcoming CeBibs meeting for an ASEM and the NASA BPAC meeting this spring. Another highlight that we have coming up, like Nikki said, we are continually doing science and having science missions. We are launching in March again on SpaceX 30. We will be having five different payloads launch on SpaceX 30, so looking forward to that. Handing over to you, Karen. Fantastic. So I opened with my excitement about PACE and I'd like to close with my excitement about another mission that Nikki mentioned called NYSAR. It's happening. We'll launch NYSAR in just a couple months, and this is a joint mission with ISRO, the India Space Research Organization. NYSAR is going to measure surface deformation of the Earth's crust down to the centimeter scale. And these observations will teach us about glaciers, volcanoes, earthquakes, and more than I can talk about in just this moment. And NYSAR is also another open source science mission, and it's a joint mission with another strategic partner, as so many of ours are. These missions are built on 60 years of Earth science gathered from missions and science teams that preceded this moment. In other words, we wouldn't have NYSAR, PACE, and SWAT if we hadn't had Aqua Terra, Aura, the Topex, and Jason missions, and so many more. In other words, we're standing on the shoulders of giants here. But these missions that we're launching today are also the bridge to the future Earth system observatory, all driven by the need to integrate multiple individual missions into a single-grade observatory to help deliver information and applications to help people and organizations looking for science to inform their decisions every day. And that's it for me. Great! Wrapping it up, Eric. Thanks, Karen. We are getting ever closer to the Europa Clipper launch in October. Assembly and tests are going really well. In fact, just earlier this month, we installed all of the instruments. All of the instruments are now installed on Europa Clipper. One step closer, we are due to ship to Kennedy Space Center in May, and can't wait to see that rocket go. Joe had mentioned the solar eclipse. We are also excited about it in planetary, because you can't have a solar eclipse without the moon. So we are also looking forward to that amazing event. And we're also looking forward to our upcoming Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in March, and excited that Lori and I will be there to talk with many of you about whatever topics you'd like to talk about in planetary science. Thanks. Nikki, wrap us up. Bring us home. I think we're finished. Need the sun for an eclipse. Friendly banter in SMD. I am looking forward to actually another amazing year of SMD science. I think despite uncertainty and despite stress and despite the pressures that we are feeling, we are still delivering every day amazing NASA science. And so thanks very much to all of the division directors. They are leading their respective communities through this time and doing just a fabulous job. I am looking forward to the pace launch next week. I'm a launch junkie. I really do like to see launch, but I will say I am looking forward to Clipper because it's the same same rocket and boosters that launched psyche. So really, really cool to see that marvel of technology. But thanks to everyone for joining us. I really appreciate everyone's time today. As always, we'll try and get some answers to the questions up as we always do for the ones that we didn't get to. We did try and get through as many as possible today. So thanks so much. Have a great year and keep talking SMD science. Thanks.