Issue 16-02, January 17, 2016
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- REMINDER: VOTE IN THE 2016 AAS ELECTION
- NASA’S ASTROPHYSICS WEBSITE FOR THE PLANETARY SCIENCE
COMMUNITY - COMMUNITY REMINDER
- SPICE TRAINING CLASS
- SBAG GOALS DOCUMENT AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW AND COMMENT
- UPCOMING MEETINGS
- JOBS, POSITIONS, OPPORTUNITIES
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REMINDER: VOTE IN THE 2016 AAS ELECTION
DPS members who are AAS members are reminded to vote in the 2016
AAS election. DPS members Stefanie Milam and Jay Pasachoff are on
the ballot for AAS Councilor. Deadline is 31 January 2016.
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NASA’S ASTROPHYSICS WEBSITE FOR THE PLANETARY SCIENCE
COMMUNITY
Jim Green, Director, Planetary Science Division, NASA
Paul Hertz, Director, Astrophysics Division, NASA
NASA’s Astrophysics Missions are available for the use of the entire science
community to advance important science objectives independent of which
NASA Division manages the programs. The planetary science community has
benefited from both using the tools and science derived from NASA’s
astrophysics investments. This has been occurring for a long time and we
want to highlight this great relationship that our two disciplines have continued
to develop over the years. We truly believe that the collaboration benefits both
scientific disciplines and furthermore, that the best insights comes from
interdisciplinary interactions between many scientific fields.
With the goal of engaging the planetary community in taking part in further
potential observations from astrophysics missions and continued astrophysics
collaborations, we held workshops at the Division of Planetary Science (DPS)
meeting through a collaboration of the Astrophysics and Planetary Science
Divisions. As a result and with the goal of providing continuous information to
the community we are creating a website that would keep updates about the
missions proposals schedules as well as links to white papers and presentations
that would help our community.
Please visit http://www.lpi.usra.edu/astrophysicsassets/, we plan to archive the
presentations given at our workshops and keep an updated calendar relevant
to our community.
This website is not meant to replace the missions websites, but provide, as
much as possible a portal for our community interested in using those
investments. It is quite apparent that we have been experiencing a renaissance
of planetary science using astrophysics missions. We deeply appreciate how
these two communities of scientists have started to work together in
understanding the origin and evolution of our Solar System and all the
diversity of objects within. When we look at the sky at night, we now know
that the stars we see have solar systems similar to our own. This is the new
paradigm that has drawn us more closely together.
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COMMUNITY REMINDER
We would like to remind the community that NNH15ZDA012L,
“NASA RFI: PREPARATION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A
COMMUNITY-BASED ROADMAP FOR NASA’S PLANETARY
DATA SERVICES” is open through January 25, 2016.
We want to encourage past or present users of Planetary Data System Data
or services to look the RFI and decide if there is a contribution in each case
that the user would like to make toward providing community comments
on the workings of PDS.
Thank you.
Tom Morgan
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SPICE TRAINING CLASS
NASA’s Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility announces a SPICE
training class will be held April 12-14, 2016, at a hotel near Pasadena California.
Details about the class and the registration form are available here: http://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/WS2016_announcement.html.
The class is designed for professionals working in the field of solar system
research. It will consist of a combination of lectures, based on SPICE tutorials,
and on student-executed programming lessons (“open book” style) available in
each of the four programming languages supported by NAIF (Fortran 77, C,
IDL and Matlab).
There is no charge for the class, but advance registration is required. The 60
seats available will be allocated only upon NAIF receiving a completed
registration form. Allocation will be done on a first come — first served basis.
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SBAG GOALS DOCUMENT AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW AND COMMENT
Dear SBAG Community,
I’m happy to share that the SBAG document, Goals and Objectives for the
Exploration and Investigation of the Solar System’s Small Bodies, is now
available for review and comment by the SBAG community. Thank you to
everyone, especially the goals committee leads and members, for all the work
over the last year to get us to this point!
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/sbag/goals/
Over the last year, the committees have worked to produce this document,
with drafts posted to the SBAG website prior to the SBAG 13 meeting in
June 2015, a three-month community comment and review period through
September 2015, followed by revisions by the committees and creation of a
single document in the last quarter of 2015. This complete document is now
posted for further review and comments from the SBAG community, with
all comments due by February 19, 2016. Comments should be directed to
SBAG chair, Nancy Chabot ([email protected]).
The timing of this comment period is purposely chosen to enable review of
the document prior to the upcoming SBAG 14 meeting at the end of the
month (January 27-29, 2016). The goals document will be discussed during
the SBAG 14 meeting, and there is time following the meeting for additional
comments.
As a reminder, please register for the SBAG 14 meeting if you plan to attend,
and I look forward to a productive meeting in a few weeks.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/sbag/meetings/
Best wishes,
Nancy Chabot
SBAG Chair
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UPCOMING MEETINGS
A) AOGS 2016 SESSION PS-08:
Solar System Primitive Body Exploration Missions
Asia Oceania Geosciences Conference 2016
July 31 – Aug 5, Beijing, China
Conference website:
http://www.asiaoceania.org/aogs2016/public.asp?page=home.htm
Abstract submission deadline: February 19, 2016
This session welcomes abstracts about the results from all past and
ongoing small body missions by combining multiple missions, as well
as new concepts for future missions. Solar system small bodies are
considered the best-preserved fossils from the early era of planetary
systems formation. Small body exploration missions have tremendously
revolutionized our understanding of the formation of the planetary system
with their paradigm changing results. In the context of past and current
missions, such as Dawn, Rosetta, Stardust-Next, EPOXI, Deep Impact,
NEAR, Giotto, and VEGA, as well as missions such as Hayabusa2, en
route to its target, OSIRIS-REx, in development and possibly Lucy, Psyche,
AIDA, and the Japanese Trojan asteroid mission, it is now time to both
combine the mission results to enhance scientific returns of these missions,
and to develop concepts for future small body explorations. Abstract
submissions are open until February 19, 2016.
Conveners: Jian-Yang Li (Planetary Science Institute, United States),
Makoto Yoshikawa (JAXA, Japan), Lucy McFadden (NASA Goddard
Space Flight Center, United States), Sebastien Besse (ESA, Spain),
Liang Chang (Yunnan Observatory, China)
B) AOGS 2016 SESSION PS-09: Planetary Science Data Archiving
Asia Oceania Geosciences Conference 2016
July 31 – Aug 5, Beijing, China
Conference website:
http://www.asiaoceania.org/aogs2016/public.asp?page=home.htm
Abstract submission deadline: February 19, 2016
The focus of this session is planetary science data archives, archiving
activities, and future plans. We invite contributed abstracts related to
all aspects of planetary science data archiving activities and concepts
and will invite speakers from the major data archiving organizations
from various space agencies to discuss their facilities and activities.
It is of great importance and broad community interest to archive and
make available to the public the data returned by planetary science
exploration missions and related data from Earth-based observatories.
The ultimate goal is to enable and facilitate combined scientific analyses
using data covering long time-baselines and multiple observations for
new phenomena and scientific objectives emerging in the future. This
session provides a forum for researchers in planetary sciences to discuss
and understand the standards, approaches, current progress, and future
plans and concepts for effective long-term planetary science data
preservation. Abstract submissions are open until February 19, 2016.
Conveners: Jian-Yang Li (Planetary Science Institute, United States),
Ludmilla Kolokolova (University of Maryland, United States), Daniel
Crichton (JPL, Caltech, United States), Sebastien Besse (ESA, Spain),
Yukio Yamamoto (JAXA, Japan)
C) AOGS 2016 SESSION PS04 : Comparative Aeronomy of Solar
System Bodies
Asia Oceania Geosciences Conference 2016
July 31 – Aug 5, Beijing, China
Conference website:
http://www.asiaoceania.org/aogs2016/public.asp?page=home.htm
Abstract submission deadline: February 19, 2016
Description: Aeronomy, coined by Dr. Sidney Chapman more than 60
years ago and to be distinguished from meteorology, is the study of the
upper regions of planetary atmospheres where ionization and dissociation
are important. Over the past several decades, many planetary missions
(Mars Express, Venus Express, Pioneer Venus Orbiter, Cassini-Huygens,
Messenger, MAVEN, Rosetta, etc.) have contributed substantially to our
knowledge of the physical, chemical, and dynamical processes occurring
within the mesospheres, thermospheres, exospheres, and ionospheres of
various Solar System objects, as well as the couplings of these regions
both downward with the lower atmospheres and upward with the plasma
environments. The comparative approach is becoming increasingly fruitful
when applied to Solar System objects as both spacecraft- and ground-based
datasets are accumulated and interpreted by sophisticated multi-species fluid
and kinetic models. In this session, we invite abstracts on observational,
theoretical, and experimental results of different aspects of aeronomical
processes within the Solar System. We also invite presentations on relevant
future planetary missions (scientific goals, instrumentations, etc.). Both
solicited and contributed talks will be included.
Convernors:
Jun Cui (National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, China), [email protected]
S.A. Haider (Physical Research Laboratory, India), [email protected]
Wing-Huen Ip (National Central University, Taiwan), [email protected]
Robert Lillis (University of California Berkeley, United States), [email protected]
Ingo Mueller-Wodarg (Imperial College London, United Kingdon) [email protected]
D) ISLPS 2016
International Symposium on Lunar and Planetary Science 2016
June 9-10, 2016, Wuhan, China
Conference website: http://www.must.edu.mo/ISLPS2016/
Abstract submission deadline: March 30, 2016
International Symposium on Lunar and Planetary Science (ISLPS) is a
biyearly conference series co-organized by China University of Geosciences
(Wuhan) and Macau University of Science and Technology. The 2016
meeting will be held on June 9 and 10 in Wuhan, China. The Science
Organization Committee is co-chaired by Prof. Wing-Huen Ip (NCU,
Taiwan) and Prof. James Head (Brown University). This international
symposium focuses on the international academic exchange on the topics
of processing, analysis, research and application of lunar and planetary
exploration data. The scope of the symposium includes, but is not limited
to, lunar and planetary compositions, topography, surface and internal
processes, geology, planetary atmosphere and magnetic fields and plasmas,
meteorites and cosmochemistry, asteroids and comets, and future deep
space missions.
Authors are invited to submit a full paper in the form of an electronic
file in WORD format to [email protected] before March 30, 2016. A
template is available. All accepted papers will be presented in the symposium,
and a special issue in an English journal is under planning.
Scientific Organization Committee:
Wing-Huen Ip (Co-Chair, National Central University, Taiwan/Macau
University of Science and Technology, China),
James W. Head (Co-Chair, Brown University, USA),
Clive Neal (University of Notre Dame, USA),
Jian-Yang Li (Planetary Science Institute, USA),
Kwing Lam, Chan (Macau University of Science and Technology, China),
Chunlai Li (National Observatory of China),
Long Xiao (China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China),
Mark Wieczorek (IPGP Planetary and Space Sciences, University of Sorbonne Paris Cité, France),
Noriyuki Namiki (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan),
Yangting Lin (Institute of Geology and Geophysics, China),
Young-Jun Choi (Space Science Division, Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute)
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JOBS, POSITIONS, OPPORTUNITIES
A) DIRECTOR OF THE LUNAR AND PLANETARY INSTITUTE
USRA is an independent, nonprofit research corporation where the
combined efforts of in-house talent and university-based expertise
merge to advance space science and technology. USRA works across
disciplines including biomedicine, planetary science, astrophysics,
and engineering and integrates those competencies into applications
ranging from fundamental research to facility management and
operations. USRA engages the creativity and authoritative expertise of
the research community to develop and deliver sophisticated, forward-
looking solutions to Federal agencies and other customers – on
schedule and within budget.
Universities Space Research Association is seeking a Director of the
Lunar and Planetary Institute program in Houston, TX. This position
will provide scientific leadership and management of the program to
maintain it as a premier research center in support of the NASA
strategic goals in planetary science and exploration of the solar
system. This position will also identify new opportunities to leverage
funding, strengthen, and broaden the funding for research at the LPI
and also partner with NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) to advance
the center Lunar and Planetary Science goals. Provide local oversight
of the institutional functions associated with the USRA owned
facility in Houston.
All interested candidates must apply directly at:
https://usracareers.silkroad.com/
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Send submissions to:
Anne Verbiscer, DPS Secretary ([email protected])
To unsubscribe visit http://aas.org/unsubscribe or email [email protected].
To change your address email [email protected].
—
Anne J. Verbiscer
Research Associate Professor
Department of Astronomy
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4325