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Suggested Citation:"Cost Cap and Launch Vehicle." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. Report Series: Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics: Small Explorer Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24808.
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TABLE 1.1 Statistics from the Most Recent Astrophysics Small Explorer (SMEX) Rounds

AO Cost Cap (FY15$) No LV Proposals Received Selectable Proposals (Category I-II-III) Category IV Proposals Science Driver for Category IV? Cost Driver for Category IV? Other TMC Driver for Category IV?
2003 SMEX $119 million 16 9 7 5 1 2
2007 SMEX $116 million 17 8 9 6 6 5
2014 SMEX $125 million 13 6 7 5 2 5

NOTES: Out of the 23 selectable proposals, 9 were Category I, 12 were Category II, and 2 were Category III. AO, announcement of opportunity; SMEX, Small Explorer; TMC, technical, management, and cost.

SOURCE: NASA. See Appendix C.

Finding 1-1: The number of selectable/submitted proposals varied significantly by subfield (high energy: 15/22, UV/Visible/Near-IR: 7/18, Other: 1/6).6

Finding 1-2: The 2014 solicitation resulted in a smaller number of proposals than in the previous round (2007), but this may just be a statistical fluctuation. If the upcoming call results in another drop, further investigation may be warranted.

Finding 1-3: In the three most recent rounds, there were approximately a factor of 7 more Category I and II SMEX proposals than there were launch opportunities.

Conclusion: There is no shortage of compelling science to be done with SMEX missions.

The science return from recent SMEX missions has been excellent, with GALEX (launched in 2003) and NuSTAR (launched in 2012) providing compelling examples of frontier science performed by missions at this scale. These missions were cited in more than 1,000 refereed astrophysics publications.7

DISCUSSION OF COMMUNITY INPUTS

Community responses to the Request for Information (RFI, see Appendix B) are compiled in Appendix C. The committee received a small number of responses, which, while informative, cannot be assumed to be representative of the entire community. As such, instead of counting the responses as votes, the committee carefully considered the ideas in each response as a check on its analysis.

On the main question of SMEX science opportunities, the responses were not unanimously in favor of another call. These respondents remarked upon limitations in optics at this mission scale and preferences for different-sized missions, larger and/or smaller. Other respondents were in favor of another call, and some suggested changes to the mission line. The committee considered these positions among the rest of the input it received as well as its own analysis.

Other aspects of the community responses are highlighted as discussed below.

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6 See Appendix C for the data.

7 A search on the Astrophysics Data System (ADS) bibliographic service for these two mission names in the abstract resulted in more than 1,000 refereed publications.

Suggested Citation:"Cost Cap and Launch Vehicle." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. Report Series: Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics: Small Explorer Missions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/24808.
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Report Series: Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics: Small Explorer Missions Get This Book
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The 2010 astronomy and astrophysics decadal survey, New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics, laid out an exciting portfolio of recommended activities to guide the agencies’ research programs over the period 2012-2021. The newly constituted Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics (CAA) is tasked with monitoring the progress of the survey’s recommended priorities.

The CAA met in conjunction with Space Science Week 2017 in Washington, D.C., on March 28- 30, 2017. This was the first meeting at which the CAA could produce a report, and in advance of that meeting, the CAA received a question from NASA about an upcoming Small Explorer (SMEX) mission call. This report addresses whether there may or may not be sufficient compelling science motivations for a SMEX-sized mission to justify a SMEX Announcement of Opportunity (AO) in 2018 or 2019 (as is currently planned).

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