 On the line right now, we have Dr. Thomas Sergukin, the Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Dr. Wanda Peters, our Deputy Associate Administrator for Programs, Dr. Michael New, Deputy Associate Administrator for Research, Dr. David Burns, Acting Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration, Dr. Paul Hertz, our Astrophysics Division Director, Greg Robinson, James Webb Telescope Program Director, Dr. Craig Kundrow, Biological and Physical Sciences Division Director, Dr. Karen St. Germain, Earth Science Division Director, Dr. Nikki Fox, Heliophysics Division Director, Dr. Lori Glaze, our Planetary Science Division Director, Jeff Gramling, our Mars Sample Return Program Director, and John Lee, our Joint Agency Satellite Division Director. So we've got a lot of material to cover. Each of those people will give you an update on their area and we look forward to hearing from them. Go ahead, Thomas. Well, thanks so much, Greg. And I really am excited that all of you are spending some time with us. And of course, we're trying to share some important activities and achievements from across the Directorate. And I want to, before I launch into it, and sitting here on the title, which I just want to acknowledge that our country, I just had an election. And I want to tell you, of course, that I grew up in a country where we had elections and vote several times a year. And because of that, and also as a voting U.S. citizen for decades, I recognized the power that comes from allowing people to be actively involved in decisions that affect their well-being and offered a greater perspective or father or other's opinions. And I really want to thank all of you who voted just because I think it's so important as a citizen, engaged citizen, signed us to, in fact, voice that opinion. And I have to admit that I wish that U.S. had elections or votes more often, and here's why. Sometimes I worry, friends, that we risk being, living our lives in our respective places and kind of what amounts to individual bubbles. Sometimes isolated and grossed in our own perceptions, no matter who we are or what we think, we learn from this election about half of America, things different from us. And that's why we must affirm to actively invite all people into the important conversation of science, into a conversation that we're having so often, a conversation, frankly, that gives us hope. If there's anything that we've learned from these, from this year that we're in, is how much hope comes from science. The reason that I'm so sure that in a year, we will, many more of us will be at work, many more of us will be back to their work is because of science, because of the amazing individuals right now that are developing these vaccines and treatments that ultimately will, you know, again, get us back to something that's a lot more familiar to us than we are right now. I do believe that NASA has a unique and valuable perspective, because we really understand the value of great teams and that value of diverse thinkers to kind of achieve in science as a pursuit of valuable goals. And I want to acknowledge that challenge that we have that comes to really getting the public to understand and trust science. And so for many of us, science is about hope. And it's a great way about learning and having positive impact. And I just want to make sure that you understand that as a team, we want as we go and prepare for this transition that's ahead of us, I really want us to kind of really recommit that we, of course, are opening our hearts, showing empathy and really opening our communications to so many of them that currently, I would say, are not in the choir, at a choir in which we kind of generally share these messages. So I just wanted to say that upfront and just kind of tell you how excited I am to kind of get into 2021 with that to the next slide, Andrew. And before I launch into that, I just want to tell you what the three topics are and you can kind of see some of them. Of course, I'm going to talk about 2021 and then kind of really give half our friends, Wanda and Mike, Michael, give updates on the programs, the flight programs and research. And then the vision highlights and what I'm going to ask to do is our, I'm going to ask all of our division directors, people who are on here kind of experts to keep their cameras on just so we can benefit from seeing the team and also encourage them, of course, to engage as we go. Okay, so next slide, Andrew. Well, look at 2021. That's just a year ahead of us. It's just quite stunning. Of course, in February, we're going to land perseverance on Mars. And, you know, I'm already a little bit, you know, every time I say that I'm slightly nervous. You know, of course, that this is a risky endeavor but our team is up for it. We have done all the work that we can to prepare for that and much work on the software side and otherwise is still going on. We couldn't be more grateful to be looking forward to this. In March, of course, we have OREX departing from its site where it is near Bennu. Of course, with a sample kind of all packed up and ready to come back to Earth and then come to the best labs we know, you know, here on Earth with us. But gosh, there's so much happening with dark, you know, kind of a collision experiment on an asteroid, Landsat, XP, you know, Lucy. And then also goes T and JPSS. So we see astrophysics, you see planetary missions, Earth science missions getting ready. And then you see a peregrine and Nova sea which are these clips missions, you know, kind of in the middle of that experiment and God, then we have web, web kind of two decades in the making. And, you know, just so excited to have Greg at the helm of this 2021 is a year of science, kind of the likes of which we rarely have ever seen. And I look forward to that, that amazing opportunity and I hope you take the opportunity of using any one of those as well as many of the others that are not there, opportunities to talk about the story of science, the story of teams, the story of perseverance, the story of excitement and success and hope that science brings next. Well, so one of the most exciting things that I can do right now is talk to you about the calendar. You know, it's getting an end of November and we're getting ready with the calendar. And you know, this is what the title page is of the calendar and you see, of course, you know, the feeling, you know, immediately how she feels they're on top of that mountaintop, you know, spreading the arms after a long climb and you know, kind of achieving these goals, every one of which that I just showed in a little circle feels a little bit like that. And when we celebrate science, we celebrate those moments and we do so in the presence of our nature that the most beautiful planet we've ever seen, you know, our own and of course the universe around us, everything in between that we're starting here. The next slide is an indication that we're actually this year, we're actually also printing this calendar in Spanish as well, kind of we want to invite all of the United States, we want to invite all of our children to be using this calendar and kind of have it just like, I don't know what yours is, where yours is, mine is right in the kitchen where we eat or in near the dining. I guess we eat in the kitchen in case you wanna, you know, so right there is the calendar. So we see it and we look at it all the times together with its stories. And the next slide is gonna tell you how we're gonna handle that. So of course we have an online request form and I'm just gonna give you a heads up right now for all the 900 or near 1,000 of you are there, it's available right now. We're gonna give you the URL in just a minute and it's available. You can get it, you can sign up, you can get the calendar. We're also gonna, of course, for other conferences, we're gonna make these kind of the calendar available at the HU, for example, through the NASA Science Virtual Exhibit where you can go sign up at the NASA booth, so to say, similar or analog, analogous thing is true at the AAAS. And then other distributions and plans of major conferences aren't work for early in the years such as AMS and so forth. Stay tuned for future downhalls and conference websites for updates on how to get the calendar for those not participating in HU and AAAS. Again, an online request form will be available for the duration of this meeting. So let's just go cycle to it. Next slide. Here it is. Science.nasa.gov slash smd.calendar-request, which is nasa.science.gov slash smd.calendar-request. So this, take a picture with your phone quickly. It's open, you know, use the browser. Yes, you can do two things in parallel. Walk and chew gum, listen and get a calendar. So I just think calendar is just amazingly beautiful and my gratitude goes out to the team that puts it together. I thought I want to celebrate that with you and just the amazing work that the team always does. I just absolutely love this. Next slide. Yeah, so what are you going to see as we go through is we're going to show you some of the pages of the calendar and our division directors, our experts will be getting one and we're doing it like we always do it, which is they speak about something which is not their job, kind of our hope is and our desire is especially as we go forward and always that we can pitch all of science. Sciences belongs together, whether it's biological and physical sciences, whether it's astrophysics or everything in between, we want to be able to pitch the science and what you're looking at is one of the pictures there of course, which says the night sky, but it also says heliophysics with that beautiful aurora up there from the space station. But it also says human space exploration, our partners who had just an amazing weekend, I don't know what you did during the launch. I sat there for over an hour with my family and you see of course here the SpaceX Dragon resupply vehicle. Of course, what's currently at the space station is an even more beautiful vehicle, which is the one that the four astronauts took up there. We remind ourselves of the 20 year anniversary of the space station with all the work with all the work that is there. I'm just going to say out loud, Mum Dawn colleagues, we hear that the calendar link is denied. So could you please make sure that it's opened up? Please update us later when it's open up and whoever is speaking can basically say to everybody otherwise we're going to keep it up later. So the point I'm trying to make is that of course we have 20 years of active research at the space station both on the inside, especially with biological and physical sciences and others, but also on the outside with multiple disciplines and that's what we're celebrating with this particular calendar image. Next slide. What I'm going to tell you before I turn over here is that you can go to the Twitter account with Dr. underscore Thomas C and there's a calendar links there that work. In the meantime, we're going to figure out how to get that link to you here and with that I'll turn it over to the next slide. Do you want I look forward to hearing your presentation? Go ahead. Okay, good afternoon everyone. You know, I wanted to just let you know that science mission director admissions are proceeding. We are rising to the challenge of working during a global pandemic. All of our civil servants, our contractors, our partners in academia as well as our international partners are all striving to meet our commitments in this environment. But we're doing it in a safe way. Has COVID impacted missions? Yes, we are not as efficient. There is a reduction in efficiency at the work sites. We have to put in protocols. We have to make sure that we distance to guarantee that people remain safe. But with doing that, we are achieving things and we are accomplishing things. One of the accomplishments that's to come is that we have a launch coming up this Saturday, the Centennial Six Microfrolig named after our Dr. Microfrolig that led our Earth Science Division for so many years. Are there some constraints in doing a launch? Yes, people have to be conscious about travel restrictions and we're taking all of that into consideration. We are also looking at how COVID impacts our projects from the standpoint of we have people still teleworking. And so when we're teleworking, sometimes when you are not getting up in the morning and going into the office, you tend to work long hours and not take breaks. So we're encouraging our workforce to take some time doing the workday at the lunchtime to actually step away from the computer get up, do something, rejuvenate yourself, think about something else, take a walk. If nothing else, just move away from the table or the desk or the office that you're in and go somewhere else within your home. We're also encouraging people to take time off because we've seen a reduction in people taking leave. This is the holiday season. Now, one of the things that the country is saying is that don't start gathering together because we want to maintain safety through this global pandemic. But we are encouraging members of the workforce to take some of those times off and to utilize their leave, reconnect with family and do things that will recharge them so they can come back into the workplace ready to continue the awesome work that they're doing. We're doing life cycle reviews and we're still doing key decision points. There are some challenges when it comes to doing those virtual type of activities, but actually as time has gone on where we started off at the beginning of this pandemic and where we are now, we have tools. A lot of you've seen some upgrades in the types of virtual tools that we're using for these meetings. So now we're able to do more sidebars and actually engage members more. Do we still have a way to go? Yes, we still have things that we need to improve on, but I would like to thank all of the feedback that we've received because people have been very innovative, creative as well as vocal and that's what we want you to do. Communicate when you see areas that we can constantly improve. So we're looking for that feedback. Feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions when it comes to these types of reviews and KDPs to improve the process. Welcome your input. We have had, we have missions that are about to go to KDP similar to our Mars sample return. Mars sample return is the next stage when it comes to Mars 2020. Mars 2020 will be landing in February as you saw on the chart in 2021 and gathering up samples. Well, our sample return is the mission that we'll be going to Mars to capture those samples and return them to the earth. We are also looking at missions like planetary mission of lunar trailblazer that is going through the process of being confirmed. So work is actually going and for lunar trailblazer it is looking at assisting us in understanding the form and abundance and the distribution of water on the moon and looking at lunar water cycles. So we're really excited about a lot of the work that we're doing. However, we have had some impacts with COVID. It has impacted both costs and schedule and we're looking at that. We're being very serious about that. We are not trying to place the missions at risk but we are really trying to look at both looking at reserves and adjust launch dates and use headquarters UFE as needed. Next slide, please. Now, talking about financial impacts, many of our missions will likely stay within the ABC and that's our agency baseline commitment. And as you can see on this list, we have several missions that will stay in place will stay in there and then we have some missions that we're seeing some challenges that will have some costs and schedule adjustments. And we're looking at that on a case by case basis and going through the proper means to address that. From an astrophysics perspective, a lot of the missions are largely being mitigated within their current reserve levels. And this may result in some increase in programmatic risk for our earth science divisions that we are seeing some challenges and most of those challenges will occur within our fiscal year 2022. So fiscal year 22 will be our challenging years for a lot of those activities. For heliophysics, we have a lot of our missions that are either in formulation or operation. So they were able to adapt to a lot of the COVID related disruptions. And but we are monitoring all of those. And planetary from a planetary perspective, it's very, very important for us to monitor what's going on because planetary missions have windows. They cannot just shift their schedule and alter it for a couple of weeks or a month or so. They have specific windows that they have to be able to launch within. So we have two planetary missions coming up for launch in 2022. That's dark and lucy. And we're doing everything to ensure that those missions stay on track as well as keep our people safe. Next. Okay, so I believe. Yeah, thank you, Wanda. This is Michael Nduse. That was my cue. Good afternoon, everyone. So last time we spoke, I talked about how SMD does not want the COVID-19 epidemic to derail the careers of future leaders. And we continue to focus on mitigating those impacts. We had spoken last time about a three-pronged strategy, and no strategy really survives contact with the real world. So given our funding constraint, SMD is going to prioritize augmentations and funded extensions, and we've set aside 15% of funding available for new awards for that purpose. I didn't come up with that number. That number was worked out with all the division directors talking to all of their own people. So the awards have the highest priority to be extended or augmented. Our awards that are either in the last year of their prime or last year of their first no-cost extension. These are awards that we will check to see that they've costed their funds in a timely manner. And we are explicitly aiming these funds at support of near-finition grad students and postdocs, including third-year NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellows, as well as non-tenured and soft-money early career researchers. Given our current funding constraints, NASA will continue to offer 124 NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowships. And unfortunately, we are not planning right now on expanding that number to support new fellows or new term hires at centers. Of course, should supplementary funding you made available to SMD, we will go back and we consider all of these decisions. Next slide, please. So, you know, we used to go to virtual panels for all of our peer reviews. And by all accounts, I've heard they're doing quite well. These panels, virtual panels will continue right now. We've projected until June 1st of next year. And actually, we're thinking of continuing this practice, at least in part, even after in-person meetings cease to pose a health hazard. So we've found that it is sometimes easier to recruit evaluators for these panels when they don't actually have to travel. And it has, of course, reduced the carbon footprint of our evaluation processes. We've also done something brand new. It's part of our evaluation of concept study reports in our announcements of opportunity. We've now done six virtual site visits. In the previous years, when we did physical site visits, we would show up at a place. We'd spend seven hours or eight hours with the team and then disappear into the ether. What we've now done is we've allotted 10 hours for presentations over two days, which has slowed down the pace. We've gotten a very, very positive reaction from both our evaluators and the teams that we're evaluating. And we've started a... Try it if virtual sites should become the new standard once we can go back to doing physical visits. So I'll stay tuned for that information. Next slide, please. And I'll turn it back over to Thomas. Yeah, I think what we're gonna do next slide is immediately kick off the division highlights. And all these individuals are introduced. Dave, take it away. Thank you, Thomas. Next slide, please. This is the November image from the calendar. And so the way this worked is some of the presenters today were allowed to request images. And I requested this image. It's my first choice. This is really neat. It's a star formation region, about 160,000 light years away. And this is a composite image. So it was formed from both Chandra and Hubble data. The hot gas was detected by Chandra. And that's shown in purple and pink on the chart. And Hubble detected the gas and dust, which is kind of orange and light blue. And what's exciting in part about this is that this is part of what is referred to as multi-messenger astronomy, where you're taking multiple messages and putting together a more complete image. And to me, it's really exciting that after two decades, we're still learning how to use Chandra imagery as well as Hubble imagery in new ways. And it's fascinating to me to see how these incredible observatories still push the boundaries of science. Next chart, please. Wanted to give you an update on some of the things that we're doing in the Exploration Science Strategy and Integration Office. The first is we've recently released a solicitation, which is a payloads and research investigations on the surface of the moon, our prism. And the image in the upper right-hand side is Reiner Gamma, which is located on the near side. We're planning to go there in late 23. And then Schrodinger Basin, which is not shown. That's on the far side. And we plan to go there in 24. Prism is the call that we're gonna use to collect the instruments for those two deliveries. Step one proposals are due on the 11th of December. And step two proposals are actually due on the 3rd of February. So we've extended it 15 days. So it's no longer the 19th of January. We've extended that out to the 3rd of February. And we used a two-step process just to try to reduce the amount of writing that people do on the proposals early on. The middle part of this chart is basically our instruments, which are on track and they're progressing well. We have two deliveries planned for next year again. I did wanna highlight the middle image on the right-hand side, which is Task Order Two Astrobotic. That's an instrument that's going on that, which is a neutron spectrometer system or NSS. The image that you see are scientists at Ames Research Center, and they're using the payload interface mobile system, or PEMS, to check out the interface of the instrument. That way they don't have to ship it to the lander provider until they're sure that it passes the interface check. This was excited to see the work progressing, their social distancing, they're using personal protection equipment, but the work has been progressing and we're still on track. Then finally, the last bullet, which is the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has updated their lunar quick map, and that's the image on the right-hand side at the bottom is an image of a basin on the moon, and you can see an impact basin, and you can see how slight changes in elevation can be very easily represented with different colors, and that makes it easier for people to get access to the data, as well as run experiments and be able to analyze it. So next chart, please. And thank you. Me, Dave. Right, so this is Paul Hertz, Director of Astrophysics, and my calendar image is the May image, and unlike Dave, who chose his favorite image, I volunteered to take whichever image was left over after everybody had chosen theirs. I locked out, I got this beautiful image of flames on the space station. So when you light a candle on the earth, the shape of the flame is driven a lot by the presence of gravity. That creates buoyancy, gives you that teardrop shape, whereas hotter at the top and cooler at the bottom, lets the air come in at the bottom, and the combustion products go out of the top. No gravity on the space station, you get spherical flames, and they look like this, this particular experience with ethylene, so the investigators wanted to create soot and see how the soot formed. One of the interesting things, of course, is that the flame will grow due to convection and radiation pressure, and the oxygen is coming in from the outside and being consumed, and when the surface of the flame gets to be just the right size, it gets to be kind of steady state, which I found really interesting, a balance of different kinds of physics. Okay, next chart, please. All right, a couple of highlights from Astrophysics. Top picture is a picture of the primary mirror for the Roman space telescope. The Roman is our next great observatory to follow the web space telescope. It's in full fabrication now. Hundreds and hundreds of places are developing the parts that will be assembled to make the Roman space telescope, and we're building up to our critical design review late summer, early fall of next year. The bottom picture there is a graphic from a recent science result where the Sophia Airborne Observatory used its farm for Ed camera to detect the sixth micron band of water on the sunlit surface of the moon. So this is a new place to find water on the moon. There's not very much of it, and it's apparently trapped in small glass beads that form from the impact of micrometeorites, but nevertheless, that's helping us get a better handle on the resources on the surface of the moon. And then finally, I'll point out the image on the right, which is the three telescopes for the Imaging X-ray Polarimeter Experiment, or XB, which we just approved to go into phase D. It's launch date got slipped a little bit because of slowdowns due to COVID. It's now on track for a launch next November. It's our next small explorer. We'll be the first telescope capable of detecting polarization in X-rays from multiple objects in our Milky Way galaxy. All right, let me pass the baton on to Greg Robinson. Thank you, Paul. And regardless of what my colleagues say, this is by far the best image in the calendar. So when you get your copy, just take my word for it and go through and validate what I'm telling you. So I'm gonna take about 30 seconds to tell you about an amazing mission before I tell you about another amazing mission. And so this is Solo Orbiter as a collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA. It was launched just a few weeks before the direct effects of COVID kicked in. Launched in February of 2020. I still debate whether like night launches or day launches, but all of them are great. And this was launched from the Cape on an Atlas V. All the rockets look good and this one was certainly a perfect launch. Solo Orbiter carries 10 instruments and it actually studies something that I really love and that's our star without it, we wouldn't be here. So it gives us an up close and personal view and we contributed two of those 10 instruments and it also studies the poles of the sun. And the poles are pretty extreme whether they're on this planet or another planetary body. And of course, those extreme magnetic electric fields have an impact on our lives here on earth and certainly the rest of the solar system. So, and we're already getting really nice up close images from Solo Orbiter. So make sure you validate Sentom as a note and tell them you love this one most. Next slide. And this is the other amazing one. I would say the most amazing. So Solo Orbiter is my number two. So this is James Webb. It's just completed environments in this photo and it's back in the integration and test hobby. And in a couple of weeks or so, we will actually do the final deployment of the sun shield that tennis courts have sun shield. And over a two or three month period after that we will start folding up the sun shield for its final time and do all of the functional testing and getting ready to put it back into this configuration to pack it up for shipment next summer. So I'm looking forward to a launch just under 12 months from now. Next slide. And- Good afternoon, this is Craig Kunrat. This gorgeous picture from September comes to us courtesy of the Earth Sciences Division. This is the Great Bahama Bank. An image is about 25 kilometers across and 15 kilometers top to bottom. The water depth in the lower right is only a few tens of meters. And in the upper right it's headed towards, not at that depth yet, but it's headed towards the tongue of the ocean, which is about 2000 meters deep. The Great Bahama Bank is composed of white carbonate sand and limestone made up largely of coral fragments that started accumulating around 100 million years ago. Much more recently, this was dry land during past ice ages. So it weathered and features, therefore, caves and sinkholes and the like. The wave shape ripples are sand on the sea floor and the curves are following the shapes of underwater dunes. The blues and greens are sand and seagrass in different quantities and depths. And images like this taken over decades have enabled scientists who study the evolution and dynamics of coral reefs. And this is a great way of assessing their health over time. This particular image was taken in February this year by the operational land imager on Landsat 8. Next slide, please. In BPS, so we're expecting our next decadal survey to be formally underway next month. In the meantime, the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research, also known as ASGSR, has started a series of six town halls to help the research community organized input to this decadal survey. And a link is provided here on the chart. So you can view past meetings or register for future meetings. And these town halls will be followed up by more detailed focused groups in January. Some of the highlights on the right, the cold atom lab continues to generate those Einstein condensates and novel configurations like this bubble geometry. We're starting the growth of rashes on space station and while you're watching them grow or waiting for them to grow, you can read the latest space biology solicitation which has just been issued this afternoon as part of Roses 2020. So with that, let's go to Karen St. Germain and see what image the provider of the Great Bahama Bank is going to tell us about. Thanks, Craig. It's great to be with you all today. And this is my favorite image from the calendar in addition to being just a really gorgeous image, all there's also some really cool stuff going on here and by really cool, what I mean is really hot. See what I did there? So this is an image taken by the high resolution normal imager, it's affectionately known as high C. And one of the interesting things about this is this is an image that was made from a sounding rocket out of white sands. So these sounding rockets, they go a lot for a few minutes and then they come back to earth. This is the highest resolution image ever captured of the sun's outer atmosphere, what we know as the corona. And what we see this structure, we can't normally see from the telescope so you look at the sun, these fine strands that you see they're in the neighborhood of 125 miles across and this structure was revealed for the first time in this image. And those strands are in the neighborhood of a million degrees, which is much, much hotter than the surface. Let's see, oh, and the other cool thing about this image is that the principal investigator, the program scientist and the instrument scientist on this project were all women. And in fact, the principal investigator Amy Weimbarter is now in detail in our own NASA core skill unit. So that's my favorite image. And also, even though we weren't supposed to talk about an image that was related to our own technical turf, the truth is that the sun actually drives nearly nearly everything we see in earth science. I'm often fond of saying the earth is a really fantastic system for taking the sun's energy and converting it into two things, food and weather. Anyway, all right, let's get back onto earth science. Next chart, please. So a few highlights for us, Wanda mentioned that we have the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich launch coming up this coming Saturday. Successfully completed its key decision point me on October 13th. I cannot say enough about the team. So I mean, Thomas opens talking about teamwork and science and this was an extraordinary accomplishment for this team. And it's a team that consists of NASA, JPL, ESA, UMETSAT, NOAA doing the execution, support from the European Commission. And the work it took to integrate the spacecraft during the pandemic meant incredible creativity in terms of remote observation and remote participation in integration activities. So extraordinary work. In parallel, we have put together a sea level rise campaign. So as many of you know, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich is primarily an altimeter mission, although it's got supporting instruments on board that measure attributes of the atmosphere and so forth. So in parallel with that launch, we launched a sea level rise campaign and you see the website there. You can go learn all about sea level rise, what we know about how it's happening, why it's happening, what the impacts are, and so forth. We also just recently completed in October our first all-virtual International Space Apps Challenge. The numbers we hit there were extraordinary. 26,000 plus registered participants from all over the world participating in this set of challenges based on NASA and partner data. You see the partners listed there. And so that was an extraordinary success for us. And we are in the process of judging the winners of the Space Apps Challenge. NASA also took over leadership of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites. This is an international organization that strives to coordinate Earth observation around the world, but also really make the information available to decision makers worldwide. And so as NASA took on the leadership role for one year term, that means I'll be chairing SEAS this year and we've got a fantastic NASA team that supports that activity. And then a couple of other things that are notable, we are well into the integration of the NASA ISROS Synthetic Aperture Radar. This is another partnership mission where we are integrating two different synthetic aperture radars. And again, muscling our way through some challenges in dealing with the pandemic as we integrate components that are built in again in the US and India. And then the other client I'll wrap up by noting the Satellite Need Working Group. This is an inter-agency activity. It's a whole of government approach to making NASA observations most impactful to meet many of our national challenges that are tackled by the other agencies around the US government. So we're in our third round of soliciting the needs from the other agencies and looking for ways for NASA to support them. And with that, I will hand off to my friend, Nikki Fox. You can take it away. Thank you so much, Karen. So I have the February image and I'm excited about this one. It is, of course, I think everybody knows it is Aracoff. But it was taken by the new Horizon Science team. He's in data from Hubble Space Telescope and it's a very small Kuipe Belt object at the edge of our solar system. It was named, it's the Native American term for sky and it became the most distant and most primitive object ever explored by a spacecraft when new horizons flew past it in January of last year. I find it particularly exciting because in video physics, of course, we study everything all the way out to the very edge of our heliosphere and even beyond into solar space. And so to actually be able to see an object that is so far away, but yet still in the heliosphere to me is amazing. It's about 44 times further away from the sun than the Earth is. And it's about 22 miles in length. And so when you compare that, it's less than a sixth, I mean, sorry, a little more than a fifth of the width of those solar loops that Karen just showed. And so I just find it amazing that we're seeing something that's so far out. And it's also a mission that's very close to my heart as I was actually on the original proposal team. And so I love to see a planetary and heavenly earth in so closely together. I'll go to the next chart, please, Andrew. And then continuing with the cross-division theme, Parker Solar Probe, of course, just completed her sixth perihelion in September. But what I'm really excited about is perihelion number seven, which is coming up in January. It is totally visible from the Earth. And so we are very much looking forward to having yet another great ground-based campaign when all of our solar observatories, and in fact, all of our ground-based observatories, if you can, turn on and capture those, it's about 11 days as she goes across the front face of the sun. As we come out of that perihelion, it is our busiest orbit. We are looking to our astrophysics colleagues to help us again as we do a Venus flyby. And we love Keck to come on again and support that. So I just love this because it's Helio working really closely with Astro to benefit planetary. And so, you know, it's just wonderful. And in fact, using a ground-based observatory, so I got all four of the divisions in there. Solar Orbiter released their first data, showing absolutely amazing, amazing details of the sun. We bought a launch vehicle for IMAP. Pleased to say that Hermes is starting to go through the instruments there have gone through their single design reviews. Icon Happy Birthday for last month. And my favorite bullet on here, on October 31st, we actually heard back from Voyager 2. So even further out than Arakoth is Voyager 2 out in interstellar space. Thank you so much to our wonderful DSM team for getting all those upgrades done and getting our spacecraft back online. And with that, I'm delighted to hand over to Laurie to tell us about her image. Great. Thanks so much, Nikki. This is actually an image from the December part of the calendar. And I was so excited when I saw this image of Mount St. Helens in the calendar for 2021. I know you've heard that we were all supposed to select an image from a discipline that's not our own, but I have to admit that I kind of cheated on this one because I have a personal connection with Mount St. Helens. I actually experienced the eruption of Mount St. Helens on the morning of May 18th, 1980 firsthand when I heard the eruption while I was living in Bellevue, Washington. And looking back on that eruption and that activity at that time, it turned out to be a key event that actually led me to pursue a career in volcanology, first earth, terrestrial volcanology and ultimately planetary volcanology and planetary science. So very impactful for me personally. So observing Mount St. Helens over those years now, the 40 years since that eruption has really informed how we think about the resiliency of nature following a disaster like a volcanic eruption. This particular image was captured by the operational land imager on Landsat 8. And the image was taken just earlier this year in April, nearly 40 years after the blast. And these landsite satellites have been acquiring images of Mount St. Helens for almost five decades from before the eruption, following the eruption and up to the current time. And over time, the researchers are being able to watch as the plants and the trees have started to repopulate the area and are inching closer and closer to the volcano as the land begins to recover. So an incredible opportunity to really watch in detail how nature recovers after one of these events. So with that, I'll go on to my next slide, which has a couple of highlights from Planetary Science. And I'll just hit some of the highlights on this one. Osiris-Rex is really our big highlight over the last month. On October 20th, Osiris-Rex successfully collected a sample from the surface of the asteroid Bennu. It was just an amazingly incredible event by the, an accomplishment by the Osiris-Rex team navigating a spacecraft 200 million miles away and hitting a target within a meter of the specified destination where they wanted to collect that sample. The afterwards, after the sample was collected, the spacecraft retreated from Bennu and they were able to take images of the sampling head and it appeared that we had collected so much sample that we were actually leaking some of the material out of the sample head. And so decision was made to promptly stow the sample head away in the sample return capsule, which is shown in the lower right. And that was all sealed up. And now Osiris-Rex, as Thomas mentioned at the top of this briefing is now awaiting for the planets to align in the spring so that it can begin its journey back to Earth. I also wanted to note that March 2020 Perseverance is now over halfway to Mars. Of course it is set to arrive in February, on February 18th for that entry descent and landing down to the surface of Mars. So we're anxiously awaiting that as our next big event in planetary science. We've had a variety of really exciting things going on. You can read through the slide. The one thing I really wanted to mention to this community is that our New Frontiers 5 community announcement was released on November 5th. Please take a look through that announcement. It includes many of the basic parameters, including estimated cost caps and the allowable target destinations. This is an initial community announcement intended specifically to engender conversation and dialogue with the planetary science community. We intend to engage in dialogue with the community over the next several months that will help inform a final community announcement that will come out later next spring with more specific details that will guide what we expect will be in the announcement of opportunity when it comes out. We expect the draft announcement of opportunity be released next fall in 2021 with the final release in the fall of 2022. And with that, I am going to hand it over to Jeff Gramling to talk about Mars sample return. All right, thanks, Lori. So January's image is a Hubble image and of course they continue to be spectacular even for a non-scientist for me who it's more like art. But so this colorful image resembles a cosmic version of an undersea world teaming with stars. This was released to commemorate Hubble's 30th anniversary this past April, I believe, of viewing the wonders of space. And this Hubble portrait, the red giant nebula, NGC 2014 in its smaller blue neighbor, NGC 2020 are part of a vast star-forming region in the large Magellanic cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located 163,000 light years away. This image is nicknamed the cosmic reef because it resembles part of a coral reef floating in a vast sea of stars. It's just spectacular. All right, next page, please. So it's been a busy three months on Mars sample return and in that time, we've gotten quite a bit done. I'm really proud of the team. We started off, we commissioned an independent review board and we finished up that activity. The report was released last week. And in parallel with that, towards the tail end, we also completed a five or six day. We spread it out because of the COVID impacts and everybody being spread out all over the country. We completed our mission concept review. So we're on our way to start phase A in January and we're pretty excited about that. So next I'm gonna hand it over to John Lee to talk about Joint Agency Satellite Division. Hi, I'm John Lee. I'm the director of Joint Agency Satellite Division where we do reimbursable work on behalf of NOAA, which NASA builds. And so the image that you see here is a composite image taken from, the data taken from VIRS instruments, which are actually on the SUMI NPP satellite as well as NOAA 20. And just noting that there's blue bodies of water except for the one right in the middle, which is the Black Sea. And the Aquamarine Q, they believe is caused by phytoplankton called cocalithophores. And that's it for this image. And so I'll turn it back to Thomas. Well, thanks so much, John. I already mentioned that two launches that are on your calendar for next year. And of course, we're getting back to the calendar URL that now works. Many of you have noticed, we've told it on social media, here it is. It's gonna be open till five o'clock. Gray, I'll turn it to you for Q and A. Okay, thanks, Thomas. So the first question, I think you touched on a little bit at the top, is how does a change in the US administration generally affect NASA policies about budget, future mission planning, private sector funding, et cetera? That's probably for you, Thomas. Well, first of all, I appreciate the question. The one thing that I've really come to appreciate at the deep level, working here at NASA, and remember like so many of our people are colleagues who are calling in. I also wasn't at NASA until like four and a half years ago or so, what I've come to appreciate is how bipartisan the support really is of NASA. And so even though I'm sure there's gonna be some changes that are there, I just wanna tell you that we're convinced that, especially as it comes to the science program, as we're half it here and that we're talking about, is we've really benefited and we've enjoyed kind of bipartisan support of that. So what exactly the changes will be, we don't know, of course, we have not really gone through the process that we're now is ahead of us. But I just wanna tell you that there's a lot of things that are gonna be the same, our dependency, our reliance on the decadals, our focus on competitive research, our commitment to the values that we've talked about, including the values that relate to teams, to our behaviors and so forth. That's really all I'd like to say, right? Okay, thanks, Thomas. And I know Michael New had talked a little bit about this, but there is a question about the funding for planetary RNA programs being reduced 15% to cover expenses for COVID augmentation awards. How was the size of the program calculated? What institutions were determined to be in most need of this support and on what basis? Michael, do you wanna take a stab at that or is that someone else? Well, I can take a stab at that. Oh, yeah, Lori, go ahead. Yeah, just to provide some clarification because I think there's some misunderstanding. As Michael indicated when he was speaking and he can clarify or amplify, is that the 15% is not of the entire RNA budget. It's actually a 15% of the new awards, the funding that's available for new awards. So I think that there's a bit of a miscalculation in the question there. But yes, the 15% is from the new awards. And I don't know, Michael, if you wanna address some of the other aspects of the question about, you already discussed the importance of trying to support the at-risk members of our science communities. Yeah, happy to jump in. So we didn't determine institutions that would be supported. There will be, unfortunately, it's been delayed. There will be a solicitation coming out in Roses, hopefully next week, but I can't promise that. That will call for proposals for funded extensions and augmentations. It will evaluate those proposals based on the priorities we assigned earlier on in SPD 36 and the ones I enumerated earlier in this talk. So it's gonna be on a grant basis, not on an institution by institution basis. As Lori said, it's 15% of the funds available for new awards, not the whole RNA program. And I didn't make this up. This number came from discussions with Lori and Stephen Reinhart and their opposite numbers in the other science divisions of SMD. And that was the number they felt they could provide. We attempted to bound that number through a call for expressions of interest. We received like a hundred or more expressions of interest as I've said in other venues, totaled way more than we could afford, which is why we've had to reduce the eligibility for this program, this program element that's coming out. Okay, thanks you guys. There's a related question. Why have planetary RNA selection rates decline from 20% to 10%? Yeah, and this is a question that is of as much concern to me as it is to everyone else. And the specific program that I'm sure is being referred to there is the Solar System Workings, which of course is one of our biggest core program within planetary science. And it did have significantly lower selection rates this year. We've talked about this, both Stephen Reinhart and I have talked about this several times in public through our PAC meetings and other venues. The challenge has been that over the last couple of years, there were some cuts that were made to the overall RNA budget that impacted the awards that were made. There were some awards that were made that didn't have sufficient funding and were relying on some funding from the subsequent year to cover the awards that were made. We are making an adjustment in this year to correct that so that we are funding out of the year that the awards are intended. And so we are, and we're also working to try and increase the amount of funding that's available for the SSW. So we're very hopeful to try and see increased selection rates in the coming years. I will note that the numbers of proposals that continue to come in continues to increase substantially and the individual cost, the average cost of each of those proposals also continues to increase. And so even with flat budgets, we're going to see decreasing selection rates with these types of increases in both the numbers of proposals and the requested funding for each of those proposals. We recognize it's a challenge. We know it's one of our biggest challenges in the coming years is to address that and find a way to make improvements. Thank you for the question. Thanks, Lori, and we are running a little short on time, but we're going to stick with Planetary for just one more question for the moment. It's about the operation of the Lunar and Planetary Institute, asking or noting that USRA has been granted another extension for the operation of that and wondering if there is a CAN or RFP forthcoming about that. Right, yes. And so, yes, there was an extension that was granted the Planetary Science Division determined in consultation with an approval by the grants policy division at NASA headquarters that the most appropriate course of action was to begin the competition for LPI in early to mid 2022 with a nominal start date and summer of 2023. So, yes, you can expect to see a solicitation at some point for that next competition for the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The decision to delay followed a clear train of logic that resulted in need for that three-year extension to the current cooperative agreement. That was due to, in large part, the 35-day government shutdown in early 2019, followed by some leadership changes at NASA headquarters that made it impossible to complete the competition in the full way that we would want to have run that before that current agreement expired. So that was primary motivation for putting that extension in place. But again, in answer to the specific question, yes, there will be a call coming up, as I said, in 2022. Thanks, Lori. Okay, Paul and probably Lori, what is NASA doing to prepare for the recommendations from the Astro and Planetary Decadals, especially if they are bold? Well, I'll start off. In astrophysics, we certainly are hoping that the decadal survey will be, will give recommend ambitious program of astrophysics the next decade. That program might include a flagship, a medium-class probe mission, and RNA and technology development, as well as small missions. We have in place the structure for the smaller ones. We have the studies in place that we can leverage off of for the next flagship. And we are putting in place the management structures we will need to manage what we assume will be an extensive pre-formulation period of trade studies, architectural trades, and technology maturation, before we'll be ready to begin formulation of our next flagship, the one that will follow the Roman Space Telescope. We're also looking forward to a recommendation for a medium-sized probe mission. And we are preparing for a potential AO if the decadal survey recommends a competitive probe program. And from the planetary side, we are of course just kicking off our decadal survey. They've really begun in earnest over the last month or two. And we are really looking forward to and excited about whatever they may come back with. As you know, we are currently, we just launched Mars 2020. We're working on Europa Clipper as the next flagship mission and then following that Mars sample return. We're really hoping that the next, the decadal survey will provide guidance on what's the next flagship after Mars sample return. They've got a lot of great options in front of them. We've provided them with several mission concept studies for consideration that are in that flagship class. And so we're looking for guidance there. We're also providing them with mission concept studies related to new frontiers targets and hoping for recommendations in that area as well of the new directions that new frontiers should follow in the coming decade. And we're, you know, as I said, looking forward to those next recommendations and starting to put the planning in place to be able to support whatever they recommend. Okay, thanks, Lori. And we are over time. So this is going to be the last question. I apologize. There are so many good questions in the list. So just send them to us, keep sending them to us and keep coming to our town halls. We'll answer as many as possible. We've touched on this, but I don't know if we've answered this exact question. Are there any updates about when the SMD call for COVID augmentations and funded extensions will be released? Very, very soon. Okay. There's literally one approval standing between it and release. Okay, thank you, Michael. Thomas, do you have any closing words for our town hall today? No, look, I mean, you know, we have several hundred of our colleagues calling in. I really appreciate that you did. I thank the team for doing the work to support this community. And I really want to encourage everybody to keep communications open. I need to say we're still learning a lot working in this environment, but also, frankly, are benefiting from your feedback as you give it to us, whether it's in this through questions or directly to any one of the colleagues who will stare. So I want to thank the team for this, everybody on the staff that helped prepare it. And I will remind everybody for another 50 minutes the calendar link remains active that you've looked at here for several minutes. So thanks everybody, thanks, Craig, back to you. All right, thank you, everybody. This is going to conclude our town hall meeting for now and look for another one in a few weeks. Thank you very much.