NAI EC meeting 8/17/07

Members of the NAI Executive Council present:

Director	Pilcher
Deputy Director	Goolish
Team	PI	Representative	Notes
ARC	DesMarais
CIW		Boss
CUB	Jakosky
GSFC	Mumma
IPTAI	Pratt
MBL	Sogin
MIT	Summons
MON	Peters
PSU	Ohmoto
SI	Mancinelli
UA	Woolf	Boss
UCB	Banfield
UCLA
UH
UW-VPL	Meadows
UWisc		Roden

Affiliation/Institution	Attendee
NAI International Partner
NAI Central	Abe and Dolci – from Washington, DC, Boldt, Evans, Kirven-Brooks, Scalice
NASA HQ	Stern (at ARC), Rummel
NAI Team Members	Doty
EPO Rep	DeVore
Other attendees

Wendy Dolci opened the meeting from Washington, DC at 10:00 AM

Alan Stern Visit

Alan Stern, the Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, was visiting at Ames and participated in the first portion of the meeting.  Dr. Stern joined NASA at the beginning of April, and met with Jim Green to find some funds for NAI goal to extinguish the rumors of the extinction of the Institute.  At public presentations he is always questioned on topics related to astrobiology, such as “are we alone or not”.

Sogin asked about the NRC review of NAI and whether the recommendations of the panel will influence the upcoming Cooperative Agreement Notice for the NAI. This will be up to Jim Green to fold in the input from the panel, as feedback to help us do better. 

Jakosky asked whether the funds received from Stern were a one time shot in the arm or whether more funds will be provided to prevent further cuts. There is strong support from HQ and this support was a one-time infusion, and future budgets will be based on the normal funding process.

DesMarais asked about the role that NAI can play in Mars Sample Return planning. Stern has placed a renewed emphasis on sample return, in part due to the report submitted from Jakosky. Sample return is important and has to be managed closely to preserve the budget but not overwhelm the requests for the first opportunity. Pilcher added that the NAI is working closely with MEPAG and will hold a workshop in the fall. There will be a sample caching capability on MSL, as the first of many opportunities.

Mumma spoke about planetary protection and contamination related to sample caching in response to a discussion at the NRC committee meeting the previous day. Samples must be packaged to mitigate risk. The mission that goes to pick up the low-cost cached boxes can provide the needed packaging. Mumma followed up by asking whether there was any thought to returning the samples to a lunar base to conduct the analysis. This is not likely, more likely would be taking it to earth orbit to the ISS. The Mars program budget is half of all the planetary missions budget. The planning for sample return needs to control requirements, so that MSR will not prevent us from flying other missions, or take budget from other programs.

Pratt asked about the Earth-based receiving facility. Astrobiologists have considerable experience with sampling clean, remote environments. Stern replied that the facility in Houston can be improved, but the cost of a receiving facility needs to be considered with a realistic budget in mind. Mancinelli added that having participated in that report, the holding facility was considered too important at the time and the location of the facility was also in question, due to budget and other factors. Stern concluded that Mars sample return is a challenge to accomplish within the current NASA budget. Morrison asked about the possibility for international collaboration, which Stern agreed was a possibility that is being pursued.

More discussion on Mars Sample Return

After Stern’s departure DesMarais added that there are other roles that NAI can play. Morrison brought up the issue of sterilization of samples, negating astrobiological value. Mumma added that risks involved need to be mitigated and that sterilization options need to remain on the table for discussion. Sogin recommended review of the NRC study focused on sample return and Pilcher suggested further discussion after reviewing the study, perhaps at the Oct. 2 meeting. DesMarais suggested that inputs on the types of samples returned, powder vs. dust or rocks should be considered. The upcoming NAI workshop on Mars Sample Return will be held the week after the EC meeting. Pratt and Onstott were not welcomed in JSC meetings for requirements on sample return, Engineers felt that their requests for separation and compartmentalization of samples were not economically feasible. Morrison reported on an Ames activity for a sample cache box, for rocks, not soil, placed together in one box, with a photographic capability to identify the location of sampling.

Meadows was encouraged by the support demonstrated by Stern and asks how we can support Stern who is a strong advocate for astrobiology. 

NRC Review

Pilcher’s view is that the review is going extremely well, in a very positive tone. He urged the EC to look at the overview charts of what the NAI has accomplished, to send comments, provide other examples and continue to develop the story of the NAI.  The URL for the slides has been sent to all of the PIs. DesMarais felt that the focus was on how to make the Institute more robust, not whether it should exist or not. Mumma felt that the committee was probing whether the distributed nature of the Institute was working and whether the communications over the internet were effective. Meadows and Ohmoto found the attitude of the panel to be very constructive and positive.

Pilcher described one of the improved communication capabilities for videocons, being controlled by Marco Boldt, which can connect up to 30 nodes and are available to all of the teams, to independently schedule meetings.

NAI Top Ten Accomplishments

The list has been separated into top research and programmatic accomplishments, demonstrating multiple institutions and multiple disciplines to capture the scientific productivity of the Institute. Pilcher asked for the EC to think about additional case studies that might be added, and responding within the next week, before the next meeting of the committee. A draft report is expected by late September to get into the NRC review process with the plan to deliver it to NASA by November 1.

EC in person Meeting at GSFC

Agenda items include Mars Sample Return, the NRC review, and the host team will provide some science talk. DesMarais added that he would like to include schedule and plans for flagship missions to the outer solar system. An Icy Worlds Focus workshop may be providing some input into this process. Meadows asked whether Todd Gary could speak to the EC about the Minority Institution Research Support program. Gary spoke at Bioastronomy in July and Pilcher asked him to speak to the NRC committee.  Pilcher added that Ron Greeley might report to the group on the results of the Icy Worlds Focus Group meeting. Sogin added that Greeley might also update the EC on the descope activities of the Europa Explorer mission. Mumma suggested that the first Earth as an Exoplanet observation might occur in September, so that Drake Deming might want to speak at the meeting. DesMarais recommended providing updates on inner, outer and exoplanets at each meeting.

Round Robin

Wisconsin – Roden – an All Hands meeting is scheduled for September 14, they are gearing up and have begun recruiting postdocs and students.

Montana State – Peters – the Wisconsin team also plans their first face-to-face meeting on September 14, focusing on the goals for the first year. Pilcher will attend. One videocon has been held with the team.

Arizona – Woolf - Focusing on phosphorus, Matt Pasek is looking at meteoritic phosphorus and the team is also looking at ways that phosphorus is moved into the interstellar medium and they have a paper nearing completion on the four different phosphorus molecules observed. The DDF work is coming to a critical point -  a concept for a small explorer developed by the team for a small explorer is on the short list for to be considered by  Goddard and ARC for a SMEX opportunity, but they have heard that they are not included on the shorter list, and were given the excuse that this work is too new.

CIW – Boss – Steelie is at AMASE in Svalbard, for Boss, looking for habitable worlds and working on ground based planet search project, working out of Carnegie’s Las Companas Observatory. They have commissioned a new camera, built with NSF and Carnegie funds, which is mounted on the DuPont 2.5 m telescope. Boss is headed to Chile to look for Jupiter-mass planets around M dwarf stars.

U Wash /VPL - Meadows – two publications have been accepted, the first by Sean Raymond, in the Astrobiology Journal, on the difficulty in forming habitable planets around lower mass stars, there is not only a difficulty getting enough mass, but also those planets formed tend to be dry, there is a water abundance problem. The second paper by Antigona Segura attempts to form oxygen and ozone, abiotically, as a false positive. As reported in Astronomy  and Astrophysics, in early Earth-type atmospheres with large amounts of CO2  around a young star, one cannot form detectable amounts of O2 with large amounts of UV, if you have an active hydrologic cycle.

MBL – Sogin – next month they expect expect two high impact papers in Science. The team has started some planetary protection work using 454 technology looking at what will be delivered when Phoenix reaches Mars, the results indicate a large number of organisms, though it is unclear whether they will be alive or dead.

PSU – Ohmoto – Kump is drilling in Russia or Scandinavia. Ohmoto is preparing for a workshop in biosignatures in ancient rocks. They have had a tremendous response with 16 top scientists as lecturers, 26 professors, researchers or postdocs and 20 students as attendese. They will have 4 day workshop followed by a large field trip. Pilcher commented on exciting results presented to the NRC committee on results of the Astrobiology Deep Drilling Program.

IPTAI – Pratt -A very interesting paper was published in Geophysical Research Letters in June with collaborators at Oak Ridge on the stability of methane hydrates in the presence of high salinity brines with speculations on methane releases on Mars, it indicates that methane might also serve as a guide for saline guide waters. The team returned to their arctic drilling site, removed the ice from the borehole and opened it up to remove the cable from the hole, and they now have a groundwater sampling device 450 m below the surface in a groundwater brine. The device is now frozen in place again, but a team will helicopter in a generator to try to melt the ice and attempt to begin sampling.

GSFC – Mumma – Avi Mandel has defended his thesis, House (PSU) and Sigurdsson (PSU) were on his thesis team, Mandel worked on the idea of Earth-like planets being reformed in exoplanetary discs after giant Jupiter-sized planets have migrated through. Danny Glavin won a development projects for a portable lunar sortie instrument called VAPOR, to look for organic vapors in lunar soil. Paul Mahaffy, Jen Eigenbrode and Jennifer Freestad are in Svalbard with the AMASE team. A series of eight papers are planned from the GSFC database on methane and other gases. Greg Deming had a paper  in Astrobiology Journal reporting the detection of IR photons from a Neptune-sized exoplanet from GL6B using Spitzer observations.

SETI _ Mancinelli – Moving forward on the lunar cyanobacteria workshop, working on setting up a date in late January or early February. Papers by David Summers on Nitrogen Fixation on Early Mars,  in the Astrobiology Journal and one by Friedemann Freund, Simulated Thermal IR Emissions from Rocks, in the journal Earth, understanding what happens chemically and electronically in rocks when you break them.

MIT – Summons – identifying items to kick start the team, have decided to fund three graduate students at Harvard, UCLA and Boston U. Have met with David Patterson, leader of outreach community, he has since become involved in the Encyclopedia of Life. They hope to use some of this technology for the team’s website which will include a pictorial record of fossil life

Ames – DesMarais – Tori Hoehler and members of the Lunar Planetary Institute held a teacher training institute at Yellowstone. David Blake is with Steelie at Svalbard with the CHEMIN4 field instrument being flown to Mars on MSL. CHEMIN passed its CDR in July. A paper was published in the Astrophysical Journal, by Jack Lissauer, in which he studied binary systems and habitability. He found that when the binaries are well separated one can have planetary formation proceeding easily, but when close together difficulty forming the planets, but also as one star approaches another it can rob the volatiles and atmosphere forming constituents being added to either star. Dave Hollenbeck has also published several papers on the photoevaporation of disks, timescales, size of stars, etc. He has been invited to give a talk at Cambridge in the UK. In the greenhouse at ARC, a team will come to do a set of collections in mats at low sulfate conditions (Archaean levels) to map sulfur isotopes using mass spec techniques.

EPO - DeVore – Several groups have conducted educators workshops, a notable one is the workshop in conjunction with Biosatronomy. Nearly 90 participated out of a pool of applicants of 400. They collaborated with the Arecibo Observatory and the University of Puerto Rico with funding from the NSF, together with UH, UA and SETI. Many other workshops were held with SF State etc. If the teams have funding to send their EPO reps to the ASP meeting it is an excellent opportunity to meet with other leads and the NSF and NASA.

DeVore asked how many teams participated in REU programs this summer. There was one at SETI and perhaps one at Colorado. Mumma has an REU, the summer Undergraduate Institute at Goddard. Daniella Scalice will share data with DeVore.

The meeting was adjourned at 11:40.