17

Research and Analysis

The stated goal of NASA’s Planetary Science Division (PSD) is to advance scientific knowledge of the origin and history of the solar system,¹ the potential for life elsewhere, and the hazards and resources present as humans explore space. These goals are achieved primarily using space-based assets—that is, robotic space missions. A critical activity that supports and enables this pursuit is PSD’s research and analysis (R&A) portfolio, which yields cutting-edge science from the data these missions return. However, direct analysis of spaceflight data is only one part of the crucial role played by R&A in NASA’s PSD. Mission data analyses inevitably lead to new questions that require, for example, theoretical, laboratory, field work, and/or ground-based observations to interpret to ensure that mission data ultimately lead to substantial advances in overall knowledge. Scientific and technical advances arising from R&A programs are used to identify important goals for future exploration, determine the most suitable targets for future exploration, develop and refine needed instrument and analytical techniques, derive the greatest benefit from data returned by past and ongoing missions, and, through the direct involvement of students and young investigators, train future generations of space scientists and engineers (NRC 2011). R&A supports the study of the origin and early evolution of life on Earth, and its implications for the potential for life elsewhere and for detecting its presence. R&A supports national priorities such as the human spaceflight program and enables the R&A-supported community of researchers to communicate to the broader scientific community, policy makers, other stakeholders, and the public at large new discoveries that come from the investment of tens of billions of dollars per year in the world’s premier space agency.

Finding: R&A provides the intellectual foundation for NASA’s exploration endeavors, ensuring that they are designed and utilized in a manner that maximizes the expansion of knowledge. R&A is thus fundamental to the current and future success of NASA’s planetary science and astrobiology program.

Together, PSD’s missions and its R&A program are the primary funding mechanisms that allow scientists to enter the field and to enhance their expertise throughout their careers, providing the nation with a highly skilled, stable workforce. R&A supports an unusually large portion of the planetary science and astrobiology community in comparison with other fields, for example, astronomy, which have a larger fraction of their community supported by academic positions (see State of Profession chapter). The broad access provided by the openly competed R&A programs supports the continued diversification of the field along many axes. These programs also incentivize

___________________

¹ A glossary of acronyms and technical terms can be found in Appendix F.

innovation and allow for flexible response to changing scientific priorities. Maintaining an appropriate balance of support across both missions and R&A is thus needed to ensure the future success of PSD programs.

Finding: R&A is central to sustaining the nation’s planetary science and astrobiology community and expertise. Openly competed programs provide broad access to PSD funding and are a key element both for driving innovation and for advancing state of profession issues, including diversity and inclusion.

By any measure, R&A is a vital component of NASA’s scientific enterprise. Yet, how a “well-balanced and appropriately funded R&A portfolio” is defined may vary depending on one’s role in the R&A endeavor. For the government and the public, this definition may be an assessment of whether NASA is achieving the best return on its investment in robotic flight missions. For a scientist, this may instead reflect the relative time spent pursuing funding versus that spent doing scientific research. While acknowledging such varied perspectives, the primary goal in this chapter is to offer findings and recommendations to maximize the utility of R&A within NASA’s PSD, to ensure that spacecraft mission data in hand are utilized to their full discovery-making potential, and that breakthrough science continues to drive future mission design and implementation.

This chapter is written against a backdrop of intense concern for the health of PSD’s R&A program, as evidenced by numerous white papers and presentations to the committee. The per-year investment by PSD in

R&A activities has increased from $194 million in 2010 to $251 million currently budgeted for 2023,² a 30 percent increase in real year (not inflation adjusted) dollars, and a flat funding level in inflation-adjusted dollars (adopting the NASA inflation index of 1.332 from 2010 to 2023). However, during that time the PSD budget has approximately doubled in real year dollars, and with it, the number of missions, volume of new data produced, and needs for new analyses and approaches have greatly increased as well. The net result is that investment in R&A as a percentage of the total PSD program has substantially decreased (from >14 percent in 2010 to <10 percent from 2019 onward; Figure 17-1), leading to a steadily growing portion of highly rated research proposals that cannot be funded—a trend that risks reducing the effectiveness of R&A programs in achieving NASA’s overarching goals, and potentially to the loss of outstanding, highly trained individuals from its scientific workforce to other competing fields. Furthermore, inefficiencies and inaccuracies in how proposals are solicited and reviewed, and uncertainties in the composition and capabilities of the R&A-supported planetary and astrobiology community, create additional difficulties and challenges.

Finding: The decreasing fractional investment in PSD R&A activities threatens the continued success and vitality of the nation’s planetary science and astrobiology program.

The recommendations herein address these critical, near-term issues and lay the groundwork for a healthy R&A environment through the next decade and beyond, to ensure that the nation achieves the greatest return on its investment in robotic spaceflight missions. These recommendations are contextualized through an organizing theme, ASPIRE, developed by the committee (Box 17-1). The discussion begins with a description of NASA’s PSD R&A program, including a discussion of key large programs. A discussion and recommendations for optimizing the scientific return from the R&A program and for improving the proposal submission and evaluation process follows. The committee then discusses recent trends in R&A funding, leading to its most important recommendation: that R&A funding be increased to ≥10 percent of the annual PSD budget in order optimize scientific return and resource allocation for the remainder of the PSD portfolio. The committee closes with a discussion of the role of the National Science Foundation in advancing planetary and astrobiology R&A.

___________________

² All dollar amounts quoted are real-year dollars unless stated otherwise.

WHAT IS R&A?

Because R&A is a vital component of the PSD portfolio, assessing the health and productivity of the R&A programs, individually and collectively, is of central importance. Such evaluation requires transparent reporting of key metrics for R&A programs, and yet no standard definition for which programs comprise the R&A portfolio currently exists. Resulting variability in reporting and in defining what constitutes R&A has led to difficulty in assessing NASA’s level of R&A investment and whether it is compliant with prior decadal survey recommendations, as highlighted by the V&V midterm review (NASEM 2018). Further, such variability has led to confusion among the science community at a minimum—and, in the worst case, has had the unintended consequence of giving some the impression that PSD is attempting to obfuscate the status of its R&A programs. Because R&A programs are bookkept in different places within the PSD budget, their metrics have been difficult to track, and a standardized definition is needed.

Unfortunately, arriving at a standardized definition of R&A is not as simple as looking at what is labeled as “Planetary Science Research” in the PSD budget. In addition to supporting scientific research, that budget line also includes support for numerous activities that are not pure research or analysis, such as management, the Planetary Data System, and support for proposal review activities, although these elements are clearly necessary for an effective R&A program. Further, there are scientific research programs that are not funded under the “Planetary R&A” budget line, such as Data Analysis Programs (DAPs) and Participating Scientist Programs (PSPs) that are instead supported by a mix of program and mission funding.

The committee’s view is that to understand the health of the PSD’s R&A portfolio, what matters most are the openly competed programs that fund observations, data and sample analyses, and fundamental research. These programs are open to all proposers, allowing for broad access, and are highly competitive, which drives innovation. Table 17-1 identifies these programs from the ROSES 2021 research announcement and virtual institutes solicited

TABLE 17-1 FY 2021 NASA PSD Openly Competed Research and Analysis Programs

NOTE: CDAP: Cassini Data Analysis Program; CS: Citizen Science; DALI: Development and Advancement of Lunar Instrumentation; DDAP: Discovery Data Analysis Program,* includes data from the ESA Rosetta and ESA–JAXA BepiColombo missions; ECA: Early Career Award; EW: Emerging Worlds; EXO: Exobiology; FINESST: Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology; HW: Habitable Worlds; ICAR: Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research; Juno: Juno Participating Scientist Program; LARS: Laboratory Analysis of Returned Samples; LDAP: Lunar Data Analysis Program; MatISSE: Maturation of Instruments for Solar System Exploration; MDAP: Mars Data Analysis Program; MSL: Mars Science Laboratory Participating Scientist Program; NFDAP: New Frontiers Data Analysis Program; PDART: Planetary Data Archiving, Restoration, and Tools; PICASSO: Planetary Instrument Concepts for the Advancement of Solar System Observations; PMEF: Planetary Major Equipment and Facilities, ** now Planetary Science Enabling Facilities Program; PPR: Planetary Protection Research; PSTAR: Planetary Science and Technology Through Analog Research; SSERVI: Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute; SSO: Solar System Observations; SSW: Solar System Workings; VIPER: VIPER mission Co-Investigator Program; XRP: Exoplanets Research Program; YORPD: Yearly Opportunities for Research in Planetary Defense.

via Cooperative Agreements. This proposed definition of what functionally constitutes openly competed R&A necessarily crosses PSD budget lines. Among other things, these programs support flight mission data analysis, fundamental scientific research, observing, field work, and technology development programs, as well as participating scientist programs, programs that cover laboratory resources in support of spaceflight data, virtual institutes, and one-off programs of opportunity.

Not included in the committee’s definition of openly competed R&A programs is funding received by co-investigators on directed or principal investigator (PI)-led mission science teams—even if membership on those teams was initially competed, such as for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) mission Co-I program. Programs whose funding is intended for the development of hardware components that are mission-enabling for specific destinations (COLDTech and HOTTech) are also excluded because these programs do not fund science or science instrumentation (unlike PICASSO, MatISSE, or DALI that do). Internally allocated civil servant funding (ISFM) is also excluded. Box 17-2 details the items included in the total R&A wedge in Figure 17-1, as well as primary activities included in this wedge that are outside the openly competed R&A programs.

Recommendation: NASA’s PSD should adopt a consistent definition of what is included in the Division’s R&A portfolio, including, in particular, an easy-to-distinguish category for the openly competed programs as defined in Table 17-1. This definition should be communicated to the science community and utilized in publicly reported metrics, tracking, and so on, which should be made readily available on an annual basis. As programs are added and removed these changes should be advertised clearly.

THE INTERNAL SCIENTIST FUNDING MODEL

The civil service workforce at NASA (hereafter referred to as civil servant(s)) provides substantial value by supporting research, engineering, and programmatic activities that enable the core work of the Agency. NASA defines the duties of its civil servant scientists as including participation in mission management, conducting mission-enabling technology development and research, serving in governmental leadership roles (within and outside of NASA),

and leading large, complex collaborations with the broader scientific community. An internal study conducted in 2015 by the Agency Competition Team (created by then-Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot) found that of ~1,000 NASA-employed civil servants, about 350 scientists were funded at ~150 full-time equivalent (FTE) through competed NASA PSD R&A awards. These proposals were competing with those of external scientists and civil servants not employed by NASA. The case was made that NASA was spending money (unnecessarily) competing for funding that would already be appropriated for civil servant salaries.

This led to the creation of a new structure in 2018, the Internal Scientist Funding Model (ISFM), which now provides PSD support for R&A work by civil servants and related contractors at a level of ~20 million per year. Funding for the initiation of the ISFM was obtained by deducting funds from openly competed R&A programs at a level commensurate with awards previously awarded to civil servants in those programs.

Objectives of the ISFM include the following: reducing the amount of time NASA civil servants spend writing proposals to do strategic and other high-value research that they were, in part, hired to conduct; enabling strategic alignment between NASA Headquarters and the various NASA centers in terms of hiring; providing on-ramps for early-career scientists outside the standard R&A programs; and implementing this funding approach consistently across SMD divisions. The ISFM is not intended to entirely replace the submission of R&A proposals from civil servants, although nominally the balance between the levels of support for NASA and non-NASA researchers should be unperturbed by the ISFM, per the 15 July 2021 presentation by Stephen Rinehart, director of Planetary Research Programs, to the committee.

Overall, it is NASA’s prerogative to support its civil servants in whatever manner it deems optimal. Publicly available presentations by NASA SMD/PSD officials state that the Agency has identified eight criteria for the success of the ISFM to ensure that high standards are being maintained, and that civil servants are providing service to the broader scientific community. A recent review of the ISFM included external reviewers who found that, by and large, ISFM projects are generally productive and valuable. However, this is a different evaluation process than is conducted for R&A proposals submitted to openly competed programs. Ensuring that ISFM research maintains top scientific relevance commensurate with its PSD funding level may become increasingly challenging as the time lengthens since it has last been peer-reviewed alongside research proposed in openly competed R&A programs.

Perceived benefits of the ISFM include offering more funding stability, providing an on-ramp for early career scientists, and reducing the burden on resources associated with the submission of proposals to openly competed R&A programs. One of the primary goals of the ISFM was to reduce time spent by NASA civil servants in writing R&A proposals, and in his July 2021 presentation to the committee, Stephen Reinhart stated that this has, on average, occurred. The impact of ISFM on total R&A proposal submissions is unclear; these continued to increase in number from 2018 to 2020 (see Figure 17-2). Areas of concern with the ISFM include maintaining the cutting-edge nature of ISFM science; ISFM support that is being allocated to contractors and other persons who are not NASA civil servants (estimated to be about 10 percent of ISFM funds per the 15 September 2021 public discussion with Stephen Rinehart), which represents a separate system of funding access and allocation from that available to such individuals outside of NASA centers; civil servants potentially having increased difficulty in obtaining supplemental funding from standard R&A programs; confusion about how ISFM funding can be used to support (or not) other proposed work (e.g., ICAR proposals); and a lack of a standardized, well documented approach to the implementation of the ISFM and the evaluation of its funded projects. Clear communication of the standards and mean by which the success of the ISFM will be measured will ensure that NASA civil servants and the community understand the objectives and implementation of the ISFM and that each center adopts a consistent approach to the solicitation, selection, and evaluation of research conducted through this program.

Finding: NASA PSD’s investment in the ISFM is substantial, and as such it is in the agency’s interest to ensure that this new funding structure plays an appropriate role in its planetary science and astrobiology programs. This would include evaluation of how, for example, scientific productivity, the fraction of early-career civil servant scientists funded by R&A programs, civil servant community service, and the fraction of R&A funding awarded to civil servants versus the external community through open access programs have been affected by the ISFM program.

Recommendation: ISFM funds should only be used to pay NASA civil servant salaries. Funding for other individuals should be pursued through standard R&A proposal processes.

Recommendation: For greater transparency, NASA should document and communicate to its civil servants and the broader community how the ISFM is managed, and the processes by which proposals are solicited and evaluated to ensure the most meritorious civil servant science is supported.

VIRTUAL INSTITUTES AND RESEARCH COORDINATION NETWORKS

The Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI), which was founded in 2008 as the NASA Lunar Science Institute before being broadened in 2013 to include other human exploration targets, is intended to enable both science and human exploration through a combination of basic and applied research. The focus of SSERVI is limited to near-term potential targets for human exploration, and currently includes the Moon, near-Earth asteroids, and the moons of Mars. Open calls for proposals for large, 5-year grants are staggered by several years, to allow overlap between established and new teams. As of 2020, there were 13 active teams.

SSERVI is a substantial program within NASA’s PSD R&A portfolio, with an average of $15 million/year budget from 2018 to 2021. Over the past decade, PSD has funded ~90 percent of SSERVI’s budget, with the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) contributing the remaining ~10 percent. Of late the HEOMD contribution has increased, to 20 percent in 2020–2021. The recent reorganization of HEOMD into the Space Operations and the Exploration Systems Development mission directorates—SOMD and ESDMD, respectively—will likely mean that ESDMD is the directorate participating in SSERVI going forward.

The virtual institute model allows for longer-term grants that provide stability and continuity to pursue new questions as discoveries are made, promoting flexibility within the proposed research projects. Large awards allow for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary teams to address broad scientific problems in a manner that is essentially impossible through much smaller individual R&A grants. SSERVI has particularly emphasized the funding of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, and the community building enabled by SSERVI teams is widely praised by those involved. On the other hand, many in the community—including current and former SSERVI team members—note that the present SSERVI structure is insular and fosters a sense of exclusivity for those inside the virtual institute. Further, there may be substantial overlap between science projects credited to SSERVI versus those funded through separate NASA grants or mission lines, making the scientific return from the program difficult to assess (see, e.g., the 2021 Report of the SSERVI Senior Review Panel³).

Finding: SSERVI has played an influential role in community building through its support of early-career researchers and the continuity provided by large, 5-year grants to each SSERVI team. However, there is value in considering whether offering opportunities for guest investigators or similar means to introduce additional scientists would enable SSERVI to leverage relevant expertise from community members who were not part of originally selected teams.

The initial cohort of SSERVI teams, selected in 2013, was perceived by the community to reflect a balance between decadal-level science⁴ goals that could be addressed through human exploration, and the typically more applied science supportive of human exploration needs. In response to the initiation of the Artemis program, the most recent call for SSERVI proposals emphasized exploration science, a pivot away from fundamental science confirmed by the SSERVI director in a presentation to the committee. As a result, the current mix of teams skews toward applied research of benefit to HEOMD (now ESDMD), but that is less relevant to conducting decadal-level science. This is at odds with program funding, which is supplied predominantly by PSD rather than by HEOMD/ESDMD. Although providing a framework to work effectively with the new ESDMD is an important objective of SSERVI, SSERVI team members noted that they have struggled to receive adequate input from the ESDMD (and its precursor directorate) to ensure that exploration-focused work serves that directorate’s needs. Further, and as is highlighted by multiple findings and recommendations in other chapters in this report, infusing decadal-level

___________________

³ The committee obtained a copy of the SSERVI Senior Review Panel report in late January 2022 as this report was being revised in response to reviewer comments. Owing to this timing, the committee was not able to consider the specific findings and recommendations in that report in its deliberations.

⁴ Decadal-level science is that which results in significant, unambiguous progress in addressing at least one of the survey’s 12 priority science questions.

science goals into both the Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program in general, and into the Artemis program in particular (see Recommended Program and Human Exploration chapters), is viewed by the committee as an essential priority for the next decade.

Finding: Although facilitating HEOMD/ESDMD and PSD collaboration on the science of human exploration targets is a central objective of SSERVI, other Directorates’ engagement with SSERVI has to date been limited. The resulting burden on the PSD R&A budget is not commensurate with the shift away from fundamental planetary science and toward exploration questions evinced by recent team selections and statements from senior SSERVI personnel.

Recommendation: SSERVI represents a valuable and potentially powerful means to foster important interactions between PSD and ESDMD. As a primarily PSD-funded program, SSERVI should emphasize decadal-level science that can be enabled by human exploration activities, in addition to science needed to support exploration goals. Team selections and program activities (including redirection of existing nodes) should reflect a balance between science and exploration that is consistent with the relative PSD and ESDMD contributions to SSERVI program funding. This balance should be evaluated by an appropriately constituted group mid-decade.

The Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research (ICAR) was created in 2019 as a successor to the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI). An intended benefit of the ICAR model is a reduction in the organizational overhead associated with the prior NAI. Like SSERVI, ICAR grants are 5 years in duration and tend to be considerably larger than typical R&A awards. Proposers to ICAR need to affiliate themselves with one of a predetermined set of Research Coordination Networks (RCNs), which focus on topics such as exoplanets, prebiotic chemistry, ocean worlds, and life detection. For some in the astrobiology community, this focusing of RCNs has had the unintended consequence of limiting rather than promoting interdisciplinary collaboration, especially because of a lack of opportunity to provide input on the initial definition of the RCNs. Additionally, each ICAR call requires proposals to address a specified subset of the RCNs, constraining the topics to which proposals may respond. This may have the unanticipated result of excluding studies that can address the recommendations of the National Academies’ An Astrobiology Strategy for the Search for Life in the Universe (NASEM 2019).

Further, the rollout and funding details of this new program have been opaque. For example, in addition to proposals selected for funding through a formal review process, the RCN webpage (astrobiology. nasa.gov/about/faq/what-is-rcn) states that as of October 22, 2021, the “NASA Astrobiology Program, along with representatives of relevant research elements and SMD Divisions, will identify co-leads and potential members of the RCN and provide funding to support the logistical requirements of the RCN.” The specifics of this approach, including the metrics by which RCN co-leads and members are selected and the extent to which they are funded, are unclear.

Finding: The current implementation of ICAR and the component RCNs is confusing, including the way in which collaborations are constructed around the RCNs—the strict definitions of which may prevent the funding of other interdisciplinary astrobiology efforts that developed organically. As a result, the ICAR model may not be maximally effective at achieving broad astrobiology goals.

Recommendation: Given the scale and strategic importance of ICAR to NASA’s astrobiology efforts, immediate evaluation by an appropriate external body to ensure that it is optimally designed to maximize desired return to NASA and to PSD is warranted. Particular issues that should be addressed include, but are not limited to, the best mechanisms for generating RCNs, whether and how proposals should be topically constrained, and how the program structure should evolve in response to scientific advances and community input.

IS THE R&A PORTFOLIO OPTIMIZED FOR NASA’S SCIENTIFIC NEEDS?

Does NASA have the correct balance of research programs to enable the Agency to fulfill its science mission? Answering this question is challenging because it requires both a clear understanding of what NASA needs, as well as a means of determining whether the current portfolio of programs effectively addresses those needs. The latter

requires metrics, data, and assessment of the output of R&A programs beyond that currently available or that could reasonably be obtained within the confines of the decadal process. Therefore, this section largely offers observations related to a subset of issues important for NASA to consider as it determines how best to assess and optimize its PSD R&A programs.

Scope of Openly Competed Programs

Many of the key questions we presently face—such as those discussed in the priority science question⁵ chapters—require that they be tackled from multiple perspectives with multiple techniques. The field of astrobiology, for instance, exemplifies a discipline that encompasses diverse approaches including geology, biology, chemistry, and engineering (see Q9, Q10, and Q11; Chapters 12, 13, and 14, respectively).

Within the PSD R&A portfolio, the Data Analysis Programs (see Table 17-1) are well positioned to support cross-cutting questions that encompass planetary bodies throughout the solar system—reflecting a key focus of the 2020 NASA Science Mission Directorate’s Science 2020–2024: A Vision for Scientific Excellence science plan to “exploit interdisciplinary opportunities between traditional science disciplines” (Strategy 1.3). The DAPs play a key role in promoting and supporting analysis of Discovery- and New Frontiers-class mission data, receiving collectively 17 percent of the total number of submitted PSD proposals in 2019. Recently, NASA has solicited proposals to study data from the ESA Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in parallel with the Discovery Data Analysis Program (DDAP) and, in the ROSES 2021 call, data from the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission are within the scope of DDAP. Such inclusions are an effective step in enabling comparative studies that cut across traditional boundaries.

However, not all programs, and notably some DAPs, presently support or encourage analyses of datasets from multiple missions, risking the possibility that NASA may not obtain the cutting-edge, interdisciplinary science it otherwise might. Including standardized language in all DAP solicitations, and those of other programs as appropriate, to clearly state that comparative planetary studies are within scope, and indeed encouraged, as well as giving examples of supported research activities such as laboratory studies, and numerical modeling, would meaningfully enhance researchers’ ability to propose comparative data analyses and other science. The planetary science and astrobiology community would thus be able to respond strongly to the cross-cutting themes identified within this decadal survey. By implementing these changes, NASA would address the “Promote” element of the ASPIRE concept (see Box 17-1).

Finding: Explicitly encouraging researchers to propose to use multiple mission datasets within a single data analysis program, and/or to conduct studies with relevance to multiple planetary bodies to a single call, would be a major enabler of cross-cutting, comparative planetary science.

As presently designed, the DAPs facilitate the analysis of mission data acquired by recent or ongoing missions, yet there remains substantial value in revisiting older datasets. For example, recent studies have used data from the Voyager (e.g., Beddingfield et al. 2015), Magellan (Byrne et al. 2021), and Galileo (Mishra et al. 2021) missions returned in the 1980s and 1990s (two of which are no longer operating in any capacity). Yet those and similarly old mission datasets are not presently within scope of an existing DAP, and so are eligible for funded study only in proposals submitted to broader programs such as SSW. Making such data available either in existing DAPs or in a new, general planetary data analysis program would further enable comparative planetary studies and ensure continued value to NASA from missions long since flown.

Finding: The inability to analyze data from missions no longer in operation and/or that falls outside the currently defined scopes of R&A programs is a weakness in NASA’s data analysis strategy and program.

The 2014 PSD R&A reorganization effort saw multiple legacy openly competed programs, including Cosmochemistry, Planetary Geology and Geophysics, Planetary Atmospheres, Lunar Advanced Science and

___________________

⁵ Priority science questions are referred to by number, with Q1 referring to Question 1.

Exploration Research, Outer Planets Research, and Mars Fundamental Research largely combined into a new, omnibus program, Solar System Workings (SSW). SSW was deemed to be aligned with one of PSD’s five science goals from the 2014 NASA science plan, to “Advance the understanding of how the chemical and physical processes in the solar system operate, interact, and evolve” (NASEM 2017).

Unsurprisingly, the nature of SSW as the amalgamation of multiple antecedent programs means that it has received a plurality of all PSD R&A proposals each year since its inception: 25 percent (2014), 21 percent (2015), 19 percent (2016), 26 percent (2017), 21 percent (2018), 24 percent (2019), and 23 percent (2020). This has, in turn, posed a considerable logistical challenge to PSD program officers as they organize multiple review panels and work to avoid often complex conflicts of interest that can limit reviewer availability. Given these constraints, and that SSW review panels are typically grouped by science theme, the value to NASA of a single, expansive program—instead of multiple, thematic programs that together are just as responsive to the NASA’s science plans as SSW—is not self-evident.

Another consequence of the 2014 reorganization was the lack of an explicit focus on fundamental research, one example of which was the Mars Fundamental Research Program (MFR)—which offered “opportunities for Mars research beyond those available from analyses of spacecraft data alone” (per the final MFR solicitation in 2013). By its very definition, fundamental research focuses on questions that might not yet be answerable with mission data—indeed, such research frequently drives new mission concepts. Fundamental science is technically within scope of SSW, yet the word “fundamental” appears but twice in the 2021 SSW solicitation. Since the 2014 reorganization, there has also been an increased hardening of defined boundaries between the R&A programs, which further constrains the ability to perform cross-cutting science. Accommodating proposals that address systems-level scientific questions, whether for individual bodies or for phenomena or properties that are common to some or many exploration targets, would allow scientists to explore foundational solar system processes more fully—satisfying the “Integrate” element of ASPIRE (see Box 17-1).

Finding: More than 8 years after its establishment, the community remains unconvinced that SSW provides a greater benefit to NASA than the multiple individual programs it replaced.

Finding: NASA’s scientific focus on interdisciplinary, comparative science would be further enhanced by explicitly supporting and encouraging fundamental research within SSW or through a new, dedicated program. Additional flexibility in consideration of proposals that involve elements represented by multiple R&A programs would also be beneficial.

There is also a strategic need for NASA to ensure that scientific expertise is sustained generationally in the R&A-supported community. One way to ensure this capability is through the annual SMD solicitation for the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) program (formerly the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship), which supports graduate students pursuing PhD-level research. PSD-relevant FINESST selections are funded from (i.e., tied to) thematically relevant mainstay R&A programs, such as SSW. But fluctuations in funding levels of these programs can have commensurate effects on FINESST selections, affecting the types of research in which early-career scientists can be trained. Supporting FINESST as an independent program, free of the influence of varying funding levels for other programs, would enable Future Investigator candidates and their PIs to propose projects that extend beyond the scope and remit of existing, mainstream R&A calls, thus offering to NASA a broader range of research topics than might otherwise be possible.

Participating scientist programs (PSPs) enhance both intellectual and demographic diversity on a mission team and are an effective vehicle for training and networking scientists who might not otherwise have opportunities to be involved with missions and flight investigations (Prockter et al. 2020). PSPs are thus able, at a relatively modest cost, to substantially augment the science return of a spacecraft mission. It is to the benefit of both NASA and the community to solicit PSPs, preferably for every planetary mission. Importantly, diversifying spacecraft teams also addresses another component of SMD’s Science 2020–2024 science plan, Strategy 4.1, to “Increase the diversity of thought and backgrounds represented across the entire SMD portfolio through a more inclusive environment” (see Chapter 16).

Presentations to the committee demonstrated that the nominal 3-year duration of ROSES awards poses difficulties for those projects that require longer lead times for producing results, such as laboratory-focused

studies (outside the scope of PSTAR for which several successive field seasons may be beneficial). In some cases where 4-year durations are already permitted (e.g., Emerging Worlds and Solar System Workings), the ROSES elements explicitly stipulate those longer durations “must be [well] justified,” even though proposers are already required to justify their schedule, level of effort, and expenses; the practical effect of this language is to discourage such proposals. Yet there can be benefits to giving proposers the flexibility of proposing work over longer durations.

Finding: To maximize the return to NASA on R&A projects where longer durations are particularly beneficial, there is value in allowing for, and not discouraging, grants with performance periods of up to 4, or even 5, years, with the latter especially for some laboratory- and field-based work.

Fourth year funding may also offer the benefit of reducing the number of no cost extension (NCE) requests (which would benefit from tracking by NASA). The committee envisions that most proposals will continue to request 3 years of funding, although the number of proposed 3-year-long projects versus 4- and 5-year projects could be evaluated annually by program managers. Importantly, any increase in NASA’s flexibility regarding the duration of funded projects does not alter the requirement for proposers to continue to provide robust justification for any duration of funding, and proposals should continue to be evaluated for cost realism and reasonableness, including whether the proposed duration is commensurate with and appropriate for the work proposed.

Last, the planetary science and astrobiology community can be most responsive to NASA’s needs when there is a clear understanding as to what programs will be solicited, under what terms, and when. For example, at least partially in response to a shortfall in funding, NASA elected not to solicit proposals for four PSD programs in ROSES 2021 (MatISSE, PSEFP, ICAR, and MMX PSP). Many scientists plan up to several years in advance the proposals they will write; it can be problematic, therefore, to learn only a few months in advance that a particular program will not be solicited.

Finding: It is to the benefit of all that the cadence by which programs are solicited is predictable. Necessary changes would ideally be communicated to the community at least 1 year in advance and, whenever possible, 2 years in advance, so that researchers (especially early career scientists) have time to strategize their proposal plans.

Assessing Scientific Return from R&A Programs

Without explicit metrics, it is difficult to ascertain which R&A programs are more responsive to NASA’s needs than others. For example, is one DAP returning more value for investment than another? Should one core program be prioritized over another based on how it enables NASA to meet its planetary science objectives, or on changing scientific discoveries and/or priorities? Are some programs no longer as critical to NASA’s strategic goals as they once were, or are others even more important now? What is the scientific return from virtual institutes or team proposals, per dollar invested, compared to those of the individual-investigator programs?

Remarkably, there is currently no consistent, systematic, and accessible system for tracking the scientific products of NASA’s PSD R&A programs. One means of quantifying the scientific return of each PSD R&A program would be to periodically assess the scientific, peer-reviewed publications and other products that result from the awards they support. Proposers generally include a plan—and a request for funds—to publish one or more papers for each project, and collating information on those publications would be a valuable proxy indicator of the return to NASA from the R&A activities it supports. Of course, not all projects necessarily do or ought to result in a peer-reviewed publication, or a project can result in some other type of product, and so other metrics (e.g., published maps or new delivered datasets) may be equally appropriate for some programs.

R&A PIs are required to submit annual and final reports, including information on publications and other products supported by the program. This material is typically e-mailed to a NASA program officer as a separate Word or pdf file, a structure dating back decades that makes tracking the papers produced by each program extremely cumbersome. Enabling funded investigators to instead upload annual and final report information into a NASA-managed portal that populates an associated database of research products would provide a ready means for the

Agency to compile such information and to assess the health and productivity of its component R&A programs.⁶ Entry of research products produced after final reports are submitted would also be important to include. PSD would then have better insight into whether its R&A portfolio is optimally constructed, as well as ready information to quantify the impact of R&A to all stakeholders. Further, this would allow PSD to assess the science-return-per-dollar of larger team programs versus individual investigator grants.

Finding: Tracking the science produced by its R&A programs is important to allow PSD to assess the state of these programs and to demonstrate their importance and value to its overall program. This could be efficiently accomplished by development of a NASA portal into which required annual and final report information for standard R&A grants will be entered, allowing for tracking of publications and other research products (including map and data products) that result from each of the PSD R&A programs.

Finally, different scientific topics may require different program structures to optimize scientific return. SSERVI and ICAR are examples of team-oriented R&A programs intended to support broad science beyond that which can be tackled by individuals or small teams of collaborators and that instead require interdisciplinary and/or multi-institutional teams. Progress on other important and cross-cutting scientific topics—such as those that address multiple priority science questions and/or strategic near-term NASA activities—might also be enhanced by larger R&A projects than are feasible within standard R&A grant programs. Assessing this important issue will require both data on the scientific products of NASA’s R&A programs, and regular comparison of these products with the scientific priorities identified in this report.

Recommendation: NASA should regularly (i.e., every few years) assess the PSD R&A portfolio to establish if the component programs are optimized for meeting PSD’s science objectives. That assessment should consider (1) how the record of research products produced by each program compares with its funding level and strategic importance, (2) whether the existing mix of programs encourages cross-cutting science, and (3) the balance of team versus individual investigator programs. Changes in program structure should be announced with significant lead time to allow ongoing research programs to adjust.

R&A PROPOSAL REVIEW PROCESS

In the openly competed R&A programs, peer review is the central mechanism utilized by NASA to identify the most meritorious proposals that are the highest priority to support. The goal of peer review is to provide an independent expert evaluation and critique, including an articulation of strengths and weaknesses that provide both the rationale for prioritization and essential feedback for improving the work being reviewed. The process is, by design, rigorous, time-consuming, and extremely competitive. It best serves all stakeholders—proposers, reviewers, and NASA itself—by being efficient, accurate, and unbiased. Inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and biases lead to decreased incentive to innovate, loss of productivity, and missed opportunities for NASA to identify and benefit from the highest quality science.

The Review Process

The review of submitted proposals requires a substantial time and financial outlay by NASA to manage and conduct. The time required to write a proposal, even if based on an earlier, unsuccessful attempt, is also considerable. This section discusses several issues relevant to improving the efficiency and fairness of the overall process.

A recurring issue is inconsistency in review panel feedback in successive years. It is NASA PSD’s policy to treat proposals as new each time they are submitted, and review panel membership generally changes from year to year. Inconsistencies are especially problematic against the current backdrop of very low selection rates because they may lead to proposals being resubmitted more often, which is inefficient for both proposers and NASA.

___________________

⁶ This reporting measure is distinct from the requirement that all NASA-funded authors and co-authors deposit copies of NASA supported peer-reviewed scientific publications and associated data into the PubSpace repository, which has the objective of increasing public access to scientific research.

Enabling proposers who are resubmitting a previously declined proposal to directly address, either within the proposal itself or as separate information entered into NSPIRES, the weakness(es) identified during the predecessor proposal review would allow them to respond to or refute critiques in a manner like that applied to the review of manuscripts submitted to scientific journals. Other federal agencies, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), permit this approach. Responding to prior criticism would not guarantee selection nor preclude the identification of new deficiencies, in keeping with the analogy to peer-review of manuscripts.

Finding: Allowing proposers to formally resubmit a proposal at the next opportunity and respond to feedback from the prior year’s review would (1) provide review panels with context and allow them to assess whether revised proposals have materially addressed previously identified deficiencies, (2) decrease the occurrence of contradictory reviews, and (3) better incentivize the considered improvement of proposed science. This would likely ultimately reduce the number of proposals resubmitted year after year.

Recommendation: To improve the proposal review process, NASA should establish a mechanism to permit PIs to respond to major weaknesses from previous submission rounds.

Another issue is a challenge in identifying qualified reviewers, both to serve on review panels (internal reviews) and to provide written reviews as input to such panels (external reviews). The pandemic forced the community to institute remote review panels, and, anecdotally, this appears to have increased the portion of scientists willing and able to serve on review panels (Box 17-3). There are, however, concerns that while both all-remote or all in-person panels are efficient and able to fairly incorporate all reviewer inputs, hybrid panels in which some members are in-person while others are remote are more challenging and can alter group dynamics in favor of those in-person. In-person panels also enable early-career participants to network more directly with other scientists and NASA officials and more fully engage in the process.

Review service could be strongly encouraged so that PIs funded by a given program subsequently review other proposals to that program during the period of performance of their own award. There is precedent for this: for instance, the PDART program at present expects PIs of selected mapping proposals to provide, as part of the terms of their award, peer reviews for two other PDART-supported map projects. Some level of organizational memory also would meaningfully help with continuity of reviews from one year to the next. Reviewers might be asked to serve for several successive years, with different reviewer cohorts cycling on and off a given program panel each year (with care being taken to prevent panelist bias in successive reviews).

Finding: Virtual review panels can enable scientists to participate who might otherwise be unable to. However, some programs in the post-COVID-19 world may be better served by in-person reviews, at the discretion of NASA program officers. Mixed-mode panels are best avoided, to ensure as level a playing field as possible for both reviewers and reviewed proposals.

Finding: Encouraging funded PIs to review proposals to that same program for each year of their own award, either in person, virtually, or externally, would help ensure that appropriate expertise is available for the review process, and lessen the workload of program officers in formulating panels. This would not mitigate the need to empanel reviewers who are not currently funded by the program, to ensure a diversity of opinions.

Reducing some of the effort required to produce proposals could also be of benefit to the review process. The ROSES 2021 Discovery Data Analysis Program, for example, requires detailed budgetary information only for those proposals that are considered selectable (with only an approximate total budget amount specified at the time of proposal submission). This procedure is advantageous because assembly of formal institutional budgets can be onerous, notably for projects with numerous Co-Is and for those PIs at smaller institutions. Extending this approach to other programs could be beneficial.

Finding: All actions that NASA can take to ease the burden on proposers, such as only requiring detailed budgetary information for selected/selectable proposals and rapidly returning review panel feedback, could have a positive effect on the quality of science for which PSD R&A money is requested.

A critical component of NASA’s R&A program is the peer review performed by members of the community—but reviews take time, both during the time a panel meets (whether in person or virtually), and beforehand as panelists prepare preliminary findings. Rules governing conflicts of interest can also act to impede the review process, substantially decreasing the pool of eligible reviewers, most acutely for major programs again such as SSW. Although honoraria are offered for review panelists, not all panelists can accept them, and external reviewers are not eligible for them at all. Extending honoraria to eligible external reviewers could help increase the uptake of external review requests.

Finding: In addition to policy changes or other incentives NASA might develop and consider adopting, increasing the honorarium for panelists, including enabling those who nominally cannot accept honoraria to include their time on panels in their grants, as well as paying external reviewers, would likely increase the uptake of review invitations and thereby broaden the pool of available reviewers and reduce instances of conflicts of interest. The budgetary impact of such a policy would need evaluation.

Last, there is longstanding awareness that some categories of proposals—namely those that are riskier but that would have high impact if successful—may be disadvantaged by the standard R&A proposal review process (NASEM 2017). In a highly competitive review process, proposals judged the most likely to succeed and/or that pursue well-established approaches are typically favored. However, this tendency may select against innovative—that is, “disruptive” proposals that explore the most novel ideas and/or techniques, which may be of great ultimate importance to science and to NASA. SMD has implemented a “blue ribbon” panel to address this issue, a promising step, although it remains unclear whether high-risk/high-impact proposals are being consistently identified and assessed across PSD programs.

Recommendation: NASA should undertake a process to continuously evaluate and improve its R&A proposal review and selection procedures such as, for example, review efficiency; optimizing information collected through NSPIRES; review panel formulation, implementation, and oversight; reviewer incentivization; factors that influence proposal selection; and ensure an appropriate balance between high and low risk proposals.

Together, the above findings and recommendations constitute the “Revise” element of the ASPIRE concept (see Box 17-1).

Recent Changes Designed to Promote Fairness and Efficiency

At time of writing, the PSD has instituted (or announced plans to effect) changes to the proposal review process including the removal of due dates for select programs (termed “no due date,” or NoDD), and the use of dual-anonymous peer review (DAPR). The programs first implementing NoDD include SSW, PICASSO, and LARS. The goal of NoDD is to reduce the burden on proposers (and research institutional staff) by removing hard deadlines and thus allowing scientists to take the time they need to fully develop their proposals. In turn, NASA will fund proposals over the course of a given ROSES year, balancing the selection of compelling science with a fixed budget for each program to enable highly ranked proposals submitted later in that year to be selected. Anticipated advantages to NoDD include additional temporal flexibility to proposers and to small institutions that may have limited proposal support resources, minimizing time between when a new concept is conceived and when it can be proposed, removal of conflicts between overlapping or closely spaced due dates for different grant programs, and overall reduction of proposal pressure. The rationale for DAPR is to remove biases associated with any aspect of proposer identity (see Chapter 16). NASA has stated that all ROSES programs are likely, eventually, to transition to DAPR (and most to NoDD).

These initiatives have the potential to improve review fairness, and NoDD may also reduce overall proposal pressure. Yet the mechanics of both DAPR and NoDD remain to be fully fleshed out—for example, ensuring that feedback is returned to proposers in time for them to revise declined proposals before the one-year resubmission moratorium expires, and ensuring that principles of DAPR to remove bias are applied throughout the review process, including the potential for bias on the part of selecting officials. Further, there are differences between typically short-term, focused Hubble Space Telescope observing awards (to which DAPR has been previously applied) and multi-year R&A grants, as the latter by design confer substantial flexibility to the investigator(s) in determining the nature (and quantity) of work that is ultimately performed. Consideration of a PI’s prior performance –requiring knowledge of identity—at some stage of the R&A grant proposal evaluation process will be important for maximizing scientific return on NASA’s R&A investment. NoDD may be challenging to programmatically implement and maintain and could have unintended consequences. At a January 2021 town hall, PSD indicated its intent to utilize rolling evaluation panels (REPs) and triage to review NoDD proposals, with review panel members serving for a 6-month term. This process could lead to substantial variations in the time between submission and review across different proposals, which would be problematic. Proposals with longer times between their submission and review would be at a distinct disadvantage because science advances rapidly and a proposal may no longer be judged to be accurate and cutting-edge if its review occurs more than a few months after it was submitted, at no fault of the proposer. Maintaining review consistency across the REPs will be important, as will the continued use of external, in additional to panel, reviews; regarding the latter, the committee reaffirms the importance of external reviews highlighted in the NASEM (2017) report. The committee

notes that NSF’s planetary R&A program utilized a NoDD structure for a time, before deciding to return to a standard annual due date. An independent assessment of the success of both DAPR and NoDD several years hence would help quantify the extent both to which they meet their stated goals, and to which they should be extended to the rest of the PSD R&A portfolio.

Finding: Successful implementation of NoDD will require mechanisms to ensure a rigorous and fair review process, including constituting review panels with appropriate expertise, continuing the use of multiple external reviews per proposal to provide targeted knowledge, and maintaining a consistent time-until-review for all submitted proposals.

Recommendation: An appropriately constituted independent group should evaluate the impact of DAPR and NoDD on R&A program outcomes, including proposal pressure, proposer and grantee demographics, proposal review ease and fairness, and overall R&A program functionality, before these policy changes are implemented across the full R&A program.

As discussed in detail in the State of Profession chapter, removing bias in proposal reviews is supportive of ensuring diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA) in planetary science and astrobiology. It is crucial that everyone competing for R&A funding has an equal opportunity to apply for and receive funding (a fundamental rationale for DAPR) and is welcome and encouraged to compete. Various groups, including professional organizations, have performed analyses of demographic information through self-identification within surveys, but not all of these studies may contain sufficiently inclusive datasets, and the conclusions presented from organizationally conducted surveys can be biased if they do not include data from a wide cross-section of the community.

Finding: The PSD and the science community could improve DEIA by working together to develop a mutually agreed upon matrix of variables that records, and which can be used to communicate in a consistent way, data on diversity within the R&A-supported community. Those data could be used to understand the state of DEIA specifically within PSD R&A programs and develop a comprehensive plan for addressing DEIA issues in those programs.

Together, these findings and recommendations constitute the “Equalize” element of the ASPIRE concept (see Box 17-1).

TRENDS IN PSD R&A FUNDING AND PROGRAMS THROUGH TIME

The 2013–2022 planetary science decadal survey Vision and Voyages (hereafter V&V) stressed the importance of a strong research and analysis program and recommended that R&A be increased by 5 percent in the first year of the decade, followed by annual increases of 1.5 percent above inflation for each successive year (NRC 2011). The V&V midterm review (NASEM 2018) collaborated with PSD to develop a rigorous analysis across the R&A portfolio to establish whether this recommendation had been met. That committee determined that, for fiscal year (FY) 2016, R&A spending levels had risen 32 percent relative to FY 2011 spending levels, the year for which V&V had budget information, and that NASA had therefore exceeded the V&V recommendation. Nevertheless, the midterm review found that analyzing R&A budget levels was difficult because PSD does not track spending on R&A in the way V&V had defined it (NASEM 2018). Indeed, the midterm review recommended that:

The next decadal survey committee should work with NASA to better understand the categorization and tracking of the budget for (1) principal investigator-led, competed, basic research and data analysis; (2) ground-based observations; (3) infrastructure and management; and (4) institutional or field center support. Also, the next decadal survey should be unambiguous when stipulating programs and recommended levels of spending.

The committee worked to meet this recommendation but faced similar challenges, as reflected in the first recommendation in this chapter. Without a consistent definition of R&A, PSD will continue to face challenges in assessing the success and impact of its R&A programs and transparently communicating these

to all stakeholders. The director of Planetary Research Programs at NASA stated to the committee that R&A (defined to include openly competed programs as well as other programs and activities) funding in FY 2020 exceeded the V&V recommendation, and that growth in year-on-year R&A funding exceeded this recommendation in all years except 2019 and 2020 (Stephen Rinehart, January 22, 2021, presentation). Indeed, in the R&A budget as defined by NASA (see Figure 17-1), funding increased from $197 million to $239 million from 2016 to 2020, which met the V&V recommended growth of 1.5 percent/year above inflation (assuming 2 percent/year inflation).

However, as emphasized at the beginning of this chapter, the fraction of the PSD budget invested in R&A has substantially decreased, from 13–15 percent in 2010–2015 to <8 percent planned in 2023 (see Figure 17-1). The committee requested and received information for a subset of R&A programs and collected data from publicly available NASA sources. Unfortunately, available information lacks comprehensive data regarding the proposals received and selected, making it impossible to attribute trends to any particular source(s). For example, no information regarding the PI and Co-I institutions (e.g., university versus soft money), anonymized overhead rates, anonymized burdened rates per FTE, and so on are collected. Some data may not be collected by law, and some are not collected because it is not NASA’s policy to do so. However, the available data do allow some trends to be examined. These show that since 2010, the number of R&A proposals submitted increased by >30 percent and the number of selected proposals decreased by >40 percent (Figure 17-2). The growth in total submissions is attributable at least in part to the combination of the expansion of NASA’s spaceflight program as the scale of PSD approximately doubled and increasing data returned by missions.

The quality of proposals (as evinced by the percentage of those submissions rated “selectable”—that is, obtaining an adjectival rating during peer reviewed as “Good” or better) has not varied substantially year on year. Of course, reviewer perception of what constitutes an “Excellent,” “Very Good,” or “Good” proposal can vary, but the statistical aggregate indicates no long-term trend (e.g., grade inflation) based on the available data. As such, the downward trends in proposal selection rates seen in Figures 17-2 and 17-3 indicate that the PSD is almost certainly losing out on high-quality, high-impact science. By committing future funds for some programs with low selection rates in 2019, NASA was able to select a larger number of high merit/value

proposals that year. This action, however, resulted in a worse shortfall of available funding the following year and selection rates dropped even further.

Except for participating scientist programs, average selection rates have decreased steadily since 2003 across the R&A portfolio (Figure 17-3). There has been a perception in the community that this trend was exacerbated by the 2013 reorganization of the PSD R&A programs. However, the committee did not find evidence that the reorganization affected selection rates. Selection rates for all R&A programs (except for NFDAP) have been equal to or less than 30 percent since 2018 and, for most programs, have been less than 25 percent. Although differences in selection rates for what NASA terms planetary R&A (21% ± 3%), the DAPs (26% ± 2%), and PSPs (23% ± 4%) are not statistically significant (to within 1 standard deviation) since 2014, selection rates for astrobiology (16% ± 3%) and technology (13% ± 2%) programs are consistently lower than the others over that same time. Proposals with higher average award amounts (i.e., in dollars per year) have lower selection rates; these awards are typically in technology and astrobiology R&A programs. The Exoplanet Research Program has also since 2014 displayed a lower-than-average selection rate (16.5% ± 2%), despite tremendous developments in this area (see Q12, Chapter 15).

The average number of unique PIs submitting proposals increased over the period 2010–2020 by almost 20 percent, while the number of unique PIs selected for funding decreased, with 30 percent fewer unique PIs selected in 2020 compared to 2010 (Figure 17-4). It is almost certainly the case that, because of natural attrition and growth of the planetary science and astrobiology community over the decade, the population of submitting PIs in 2010 was not the same as that in 2020. Nonetheless, this finding is generally consistent with the decrease in selection rates over that period. The average proposal team size and maximum team size have both increased marginally from 2010 to 2020; meanwhile, the average requested budget for a proposal has increased greatly over inflation (Figure 17-5).

Finding: Planetary science and astrobiology researchers are writing more proposals (with only a marginal increase in average team size) and requesting more funding in recent years than before; meanwhile, the number of selected proposals has decreased, despite the average proposal quality remaining essentially constant. These trends apply across all of PSD R&A but are particularly pronounced for astrobiology, technology, and exoplanets programs. The R&A reorganization in 2013 did not materially change these trends and NASA does not collect sufficient data to enable a full understanding of their origins.

Finding: Although the committee could not isolate the reason(s) why proposal budgets have increased so substantially (e.g., increased overhead rates, increased salaries, growth in the proportion of soft money researchers), it is clear that increases to the R&A budget have not kept pace with demand.

Recommendation: NASA should collect comprehensive (as legally permitted) information on proposers and submitted proposals as needed to support internal and external assessments of the health of its R&A programs, addressing issues that include, for example, proposing team demographics and employment trends, and factors affecting proposal pressure and budgets.

RECOMMENDED FUNDING FOR NASA PLANETARY R&A

Figure 17-3 shows a progressive decrease in PSD R&A proposal selection rates, which for core programs have gone from >40 percent at the beginning of the past decade to <20 percent. The very low current selection rates adversely undercut innovation, efficiency of scientific return, and the training and sustaining of the workforce. A Proposal Pressures Study Group commissioned by the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC), which advises NSF, concluded that a 20 percent overall selection rate was unhealthy for the field of astronomy (Cushman et al. 2015), because it:

Precludes stable, long-term support for students, postdocs, or researchers on soft money, and it preferentially discourages young researchers from remaining in the field.

Proposal writing takes time and, although having some intrinsic value, writing too many unsuccessful proposals and serving on the review panels that assess them come at the expense of scientific productivity. Viewed from NASA’s perspective, this loss of scientific productivity means that fewer discoveries are made from, for example, spaceflight mission data analysis and fundamental research, and the research community is spending less time feeding new knowledge into NASA’s planning for future missions than it otherwise could be.

The AAAC study utilized a statistical model (von Hippel and von Hippel 2015) of NSF astronomy grant proposers and success rates, which indicated that a selection rate of 30–35 percent for a given program leads to a manageable level of risk (~30 percent) of no funding after three attempts, representing a healthy competitive environment. For a 20 percent selection rate (very close to the current average selection rate of 21 percent for Planetary R&A), this statistical model demonstrated that presently unfunded and new investigators would compete with one another for an even lower effective funding rate of only 12 percent. Using conditional probabilities for three consecutive attempts, 80 percent of proposers would be unable to secure funding for their research in a 3-year funding cycle for a program with a selection rate of 20 percent. The AAAC study concluded that selection rates below approximately 20 percent likely drive outstanding researchers away from these research programs, again depriving NASA of highly trained and diverse expertise needed to fulfill its mission. If, for example, selection rates are lower than one in three, with substantial numbers of highly desirable and highly ranked (“Excellent” and “Very Good”) proposals—based on historical funding data—not being selected by program officers because of budgetary rather than programmatic considerations, then NASA has reason to be concerned. The data obtained by the AAAC indicates that, even if 33 percent selection rates were achieved at present proposal submission numbers, there would still be some proposals rated “Very Good” and above that would not be selected (Figure 17-6).

The 2021 decadal survey in astronomy and astrophysics (NASEM 2023), when reviewing this and other data, advocated for a proposal selection rate of 30 percent, finding that this percentage “strikes an appropriate balance between a healthy competitive environment and a good chance of eventual success with resubmission.” The committee reaffirms their finding.

Finding: Current PSD R&A proposal selection rates near or below 20 percent are strongly detrimental to scientific return and to sustaining and growing PSD’s overall program. A selection rate near 30 percent would appropriately balance competitiveness with scientific efficiency while maintaining high standards among selected proposals.

Setting the PSD R&A budget to that needed to achieve a specific desired selection rate could, however, be problematic. The number of proposal submissions reflects, to some degree, the science community’s interests and

perceived likelihood of proposal success. Implementing a fixed selection rate thus risks driving up demand and proposal pressure, potentially requiring ever larger R&A budgets to maintain, to the detriment of the rest of the PSD program.

The committee advocates that PSD’s investment in R&A activities should be proportionate to the overall scale of the PSD program, a logic similar to that used in industry to establish investment levels for supportive research and development activities. Clearly the past decade has been enormously successful for PSD, with an approximate doubling in the total PSD annual budget. Recent budgetary expansion reflects substantial growth across most PSD budgetary categories, with flagship (MSR and Europa Clipper) and the Discovery/New Frontiers mission lines approximately doubling from 2018 to 2023, in addition to proportionally even larger growth in planetary defense and LDEP during this period. However, investments in R&A have not proportionately kept up with this expansion of activities, which is a damaging trend that needs to be reversed to ensure that NASA maximizes science from its past and ongoing missions, optimizes design of future missions, and trains its needed workforce. The overall trend of decreasing proportional investments by PSD into R&A—as illustrated in Figure 17-1—needs to be reversed to maintain the appropriate balance between missions and basic scientific research and analysis.

Technology-focused companies typically invest 10 to 15 percent of their annual revenue into research and development (R&D) activities. Industry R&D is not a perfect analog for the full scope of PSD R&A work, because the latter supports analyses based on current and past projects in addition to preparing for the future. Nonetheless, the committee notes that at the beginning of the prior decade, R&A similarly comprised 14 percent of the PSD budget. Recent levels in the 8 to 9 percent range have led to very low selection rates and threaten the continued scientific payoff from NASA’s mission investments. Although the percentage difference between 8 to 9 percent and ≥10 percent can seem small, the difference in absolute dollars is substantial with respect to R&A investments.

The current FY 2023 PSD budget is $3.2 billion, and the currently planned FY 2023 R&A level is $249 million (7.9 percent), with approximately $185 million of this for openly competed programs (based on a 2 percent/year increase in non-openly competed activities for nondecadal years; see Box 17-2). Increasing the FY 2023 R&A budget percentage to ≥10 percent would be a ≥$70 million addition to R&A, and if directed to the openly competed programs, would be a ≥37 percent increase in support for those programs. This illustrates that a relatively minor increase in fractional PSD investment into R&A would strongly (and disproportionately) enhance the value delivered by R&A to its flight programs. Yearly progressive augmentations to the R&A budget to reinstate a minimum 10 percent investment percentage by mid-decade would enable PSD program officers to manage their capacity to support higher selection rates sustainably and strategically. During periods of budget contraction, it is critical that the absolute level of support for R&A be maintained, if at all possible, in keeping with decision ules outlined in Chapter 22, so as to maintain NASA PSD’s core human capital and expertise. Together, these actions represent a strong response to the ASPIRE’s “Augment” component (see Box 17-1).

Finding: NASA PSD’s scientific needs and aspirations for the coming decade will require substantially augmenting its investment in supporting R&A.

Recommendation: NASA PSD should increase its investment in what this decadal survey defines as R&A activities to achieve a minimum annual funding level of 10 percent of the PSD total annual budget by mid-decade. This increase should be achieved through a progressive ramp-up in funding allocated to the openly competed R&A programs. Mid-decade, NASA should work with an appropriately constituted independent group to assess progress in achieving this recommended funding level.

This recommendation will lead to a substantive increase in funding of openly competed R&A programs compared with recent funding levels and future plans, as currently understood and detailed next. Adopting the R&A yearly budget for FY 2023 through FY 2026 from the budget provided by the PSD director in July 2021, followed by 2 percent/year inflationary increases through FY 2032, the implied currently planned total PSD R&A investment over the next decade would be $2.6 billion. Analysis of FY 2020 expenditures (see Box 17-2) shows that out of a total of $240 million in the NASA-defined R&A line that year (i.e., the R&A wedge shown in Figure 17-1), approximately $170 million supported openly competed programs, with the remaining $70 million supporting non-openly competed programs and other activities. Assuming a 2 percent per year increase in non-openly competed activities, and treating the decadal survey as a one-time, inflation-adjusted cost in 2030, implies that out of a currently planned $2.6 billion total, ~$1.9 billion would support openly competed programs.

The above recommendation directs R&A funding increases to the openly competed programs. In the Recommended Program chapter, the committee presents two representative programs for Recommended and Level PSD budgetary profiles (see Table 22-2). The proposed levels of support for R&A in both budgetary profiles adopt a 2 percent/year inflationary increase for the non-openly competed elements of the R&A portfolio, extrapolating from the FY 2020 costs associated with those elements per above (which is ideal but may be unrealistic given recent trends). However, starting in FY 2023, the yearly funding for openly competed elements is increased by 10 percent per year for the first 8 years of the decade (in the Recommended Program) or for the first 4 years of the decade, followed by inflationary increases after that time (in the Level Program). Both budgetary profiles return the annual R&A investment to 10 percent or more of the annual PSD budget by mid-decade, leading to a decade total R&A investment of $3.9 billion (with $3.2 billion for openly competed programs) in the Recommended Program or $3.4 billion (with $2.7 billion for openly competed programs) in the Level Program. In real year dollars, these are decade increases in support for openly competed programs of $1.3 billion [$800 million] for the committee’s Recommended [Level] programs relative to current R&A budgetary plans.

THE SIZE OF THE PLANETARY RESEARCH COMMUNITY

There is no single solution to addressing the concerns of all R&A stakeholders. Although additional support for R&A, as recommended above, is one major part of the solution, money alone is not a panacea because of the risk of induced demand—that a larger R&A portfolio without a commensurate plan to manage the appropriate size of the planetary science and astrobiology community could lead to more people submitting proposals, greater

pressure on available funds, and a repeating cycle of declining selection rates. In this situation, it is appropriate to consider how we can best shepherd sustainable growth of the community without being unwitting gatekeepers and propagating structural inequities that may contribute to a less diverse workforce.

To maximally benefit from its past, present, and future spaceflight missions, NASA relies on a stable, diverse community of expert scientists to analyze and interpret data, develop new mission concepts, and train the next generation of researchers. Without a stable community, the Agency loses organizational memory and expertise, ultimately risking a decline in U.S. leadership in science. Indeed, the NASA-funded science community arguably fulfills a strategic national interest by helping maintain that science leadership. However, the PSD does not need—nor can it afford to support—a science community of unconstrained size.

Understanding the Demographics of the Community

Establishing the origin(s) of the proposal and funding trends described above requires, in part, collecting and analyzing demographic data, such as how much R&A funding the typical scientist receives, as well as the proportions of those researchers who are teaching or research faculty, either tenured or untenured; those who are research or staff scientists, civil servants, or contractors, either permanent or temporary; those who are postdoctoral research scientists; and the number of graduate or undergraduate students receiving support. Unfortunately, such information is not generally available. As a result, there exists no single, comprehensive snapshot of who comprises the scientific community at a given time, nor what pressures are placed on R&A programs as the demographics of the community evolve (see chapter on the State of the Profession).

Notably, some such data are available. For example, the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) conducted a survey of the planetary science workforce in 2020 (Porter et al. 2020; Hendrix and Rathbun 2020). Preliminary results from the DPS study included findings that the planetary science and astrobiology community is growing, that about three quarters of workers are at universities or research institutions, and that more than a third of nonfaculty respondents receive most of their funding from NASA grants. These data have also been used to investigate the demographics of the planetary community (Rathbun et al. 2021; Rivera-Valentín et al. 2020).

However, various organizations collect different data and may not sample the full breadth of the community involved in PSD-supported R&A; those organizations also cannot reasonably collect data as a function of specific funding programs or on anything other than sporadic timescales. Limited data are available from publicly accessible records through NASA’s Senior Advisors for Research and Analysis (SARA) website, and indeed underpin some of the findings described in this chapter. Additional information regarding the number of unique PIs, the size of proposal teams, and requested funding levels over time has been made available to the committee during the preparation of this chapter, but with differing levels of completeness due in part to the vagaries of record keeping (especially prior to the availability of digital records) and federal regulations regarding data preservation and privacy.

Collection of information about the skills, expertise, and research foci of the planetary science and astrobiology community would offer insight into current and future trends—with implications, for example, for forecasting how and why proposal pressures may change, and for responding to demographic changes in career types or expertise (e.g., the proportion of soft- versus hard-money scientists in the field, or a loss of research skills in specific areas). The status quo approach leaves NASA in a reactive mode, responding to trends after the fact as best it can. It is this situation that motivates the survey element of ASPIRE (see Box 17-1), and that motivates the earlier recommendation in this chapter on the importance of collecting relevant proposal and proposer demographic data.

Finding: Detailed and inclusive proposal, professional, and demographic information is needed to allow NASA to understand and communicate to stakeholders the factors driving pressures on specific R&A programs, anticipate future trends and problems in a timely manner, and determine whether responses and/or corrective actions are effective.

How Big a Planetary Science and Astrobiology Community Does NASA Need?

A key question that underpins any effort to ensure a healthy R&A program is: what is the appropriate size of the PSD-supported community? In principle, the answer is that the required community size is that which allows the nation’s most talented researchers to produce sufficient high-priority and high-value science across the topical scope needed to support and further NASA’s science goals.

As detailed above, the committee recommends that the R&A annual budget be increased to ≥10 percent of the PSD annual budget by mid-decade, implying that by the decade’s end, annual funding for openly competed programs would be >$400 million [>$300 million] in the Recommended [Level] program (see Table 22-2), a factor of 2.4 [1.8] increase relative to the $170 million estimated funding level for openly competed programs in FY 2020 (see Box 17-1). The optimal size of the research community needed to meet NASA’s needs will depend on a variety of complex and evolving factors, including, for example, the average portion of time each researcher spends on research, the seniority distribution of researchers optimal for producing the science NASA needs, and breadth of research expertise needed across different disciplines.

However, it is anticipated that there will always be more scientific ideas to explore than can be supported, and there will always be an imbalance between demand (submitted proposals) and supply (funding). In other words, there will always be more people that wish to be supported to do research than can be supported by NASA’s PSD R&A portfolio. The relationship between NASA and the research community is symbiotic, but asymmetric: NASA benefits from the work of planetary scientists and astrobiologists in many crucial ways, and its support of scientists allows them to pursue topics of great scientific interest and to participate in remarkable opportunities to explore the universe. Thus, planetary scientists and astrobiologists provide a service for NASA and do not have any a priori right to PSD R&A funding. It is thus necessary to frame this issue in terms of the needs of NASA, and what mix of expertise, capabilities, and career types and stages is necessary to fulfill those needs. Yet, it is vital to recognize that NASA has, both directly and indirectly, invested substantial resources in training the present planetary science and astrobiology community, and care is merited to avoid needlessly losing existing expertise and talent.

Finding: Ongoing evaluation of the necessary and sustainable size of the PSD R&A-supported science community will require NASA, scientists, and other stakeholders to work together in a transparent manner to identify mutual needs and constraints, in order to align expectations, reduce inefficiencies, and support positive relationships between NASA and its scientific workforce.

Expanding Career Options for Planetary Scientists and Astrobiologists

There are several complementary means by which NASA and the scientific community can collaboratively determine the size of a sustainable planetary science and astrobiology workforce. As discussed above, detailed and inclusive demographic and professional information will help paint a much more comprehensive picture of the field as it currently stands, including where there are gaps in expertise, and where the diversity of the community needs to be improved (see Chapter 16). An independent study to examine this issue in detail by acquiring sufficient historical data for R&A programs (e.g., the number and cost of proposals per program per year, and the size of the proposing community through time) would be well placed to draw firm conclusions regarding the sustainable size of an R&A-supported workforce.

At the core of this issue is the fact that while NASA’s planetary science activities have grown and the number of people graduating each year with PhDs in planetary science, astrobiology, and related fields has increased, the availability of faculty and research scientist positions has not increased at the same rate.

One consequence of this imbalance is growth of the soft-money community, in which scientists have nominally few or no teaching and service obligations but are required to source up to 100 percent of their salary each year, much of it through the PSD R&A budget. Soft-money scientists play a key role in the planetary science and astrobiology community (Bottke et al. 2022), and there are numerous advantages to the soft-money route, including a flexibility in working location and style that an individual’s needs might warrant (e.g., if they are a caregiver/parent or require flexibility to work where no relevant employment possibilities are available). Because of their reliance on R&A programs as a primary or sole source of support, this cohort of the community is particularly vulnerable to decreases or instability in R&A investment, with commensurate negative impacts to the PSD through potential loss of the expertise and diversity this group brings to the planetary workforce (see Chapter 16).

One key action NASA can take to address this issue is to help improve awareness among undergraduate and graduate students, and the faculty who train them, of the breadth of career options after graduation. For example, the analytical, numerical, programming, and presentation skills with which planetary students are equipped when they graduate are readily applicable to a variety of fields distinct from planetary science and

astrobiology, as well as those more closely related—including, but not limited to, the quickly growing commercial space sector. Educating planetary science and astrobiology graduate students on career paths outside the traditional academic track (i.e., government, nonprofit, and industry sectors), and providing training for how to prepare for, find, and apply to those jobs, would do much to reduce the pressure on the funds available from NASA for R&A. More broadly, by normalizing the pursuit of careers outside academia, such efforts would help scientists (especially early-career scientists) avoid internalizing the stigma that leaving academia is some sort of failure (Frank et al. 2020).

It is important to recognize that NASA alone cannot address this issue. Although graduate and postdoctoral training programs such as FINESST and NPP support early-career researchers, the commercial sector (both space and technology companies) could also help by, for example, sponsoring student research and conferences. And the science community (including researchers, faculty, and academic institutions) needs to acknowledge the responsibility it has to its junior colleagues when they begin their scientific training—to be honest regarding the career options ahead of them, and not hide from the fact that the prospect of securing a permanent position as a faculty member, mission scientist, or civil servant is far from assured, and that by design securing R&A funds will always been extremely competitive.

Supporting a diversity of career options in the space sciences for young researchers beyond traditional R&A support might not appear to be NASA’s responsibility. However, the success of NASA’s planetary science program relies substantially on graduate student and young scientist contributions. If such positions become increasingly unlikely to lead to sustainable employment, the number of people undertaking planetary science and astrobiology studies will decrease. This would undercut both the supply of young researchers that NASA needs, as well as the overall quality and diversity of NASA’s workforce if the best and the brightest increasingly choose other fields. In addition, individuals that participate in industry and may ultimately return to NASA or research positions, bringing with them new skills, expertise, and connections not readily achieved through standard graduate or post-graduate research training.

Finding: There are other paths beyond those supported by PSD R&A that planetary science and astrobiology students can pursue, to the benefit of the students, NASA, and the community. The fostering of connections between industry and students by NASA and its partners would enhance awareness of such alternatives.

NASA-NSF PARTNERSHIPS

NSF also provides support for planetary science activities. The annual NSF investment in planetary R&A is much smaller than NASA’s (e.g., the FY 2017 estimated NSF budget for research grants in both solar and planetary sciences was $10 million; see https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2016/nsf16602/nsf16602.htm). However, effective partnering between NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the allocation of R&A resources is important for meeting many decadal survey-recommended research objectives. In the past, NASA and NSF supported the Arecibo Observatory and obtained one-of-a-kind radar observations of a wide array of solar system objects. Heading into the next decade, the NASA-NSF partnership will enable the return of exciting solar system science from existing, as well as new, ground- and space-based telescopes, such as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (formerly the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope). Many potential new targets for NASA missions reside within the discovery and characterization space for these assets. For example, Rubin Observatory is projected to discover millions of asteroids and tens of thousands of trans-neptunian objects in its first year of operations (currently anticipated to be 2024: cf. Chapter 18), discoveries that would be directly relevant to the PSD.

Similarly, Antarctica is a unique and valuable location for fieldwork relevant to both planetary and Earth sciences. As both NSF and NASA have interests in promoting high-science-return fieldwork from Antarctica, a sustainable pathway for collaboration between the agencies is essential. At present, policies regarding proposals to conduct NASA PSD-funded research in Antarctica vary between programs, which can cause confusion for researchers. Improvements to these policies would help preserve a role for planetary science and astrobiology research in Antarctica, ensuring that such work can be conducted in a sustainable partnership with polar sciences, the United States Antarctic Program, and NSF.

Another example where NSF and NASA could benefit from closer cooperation is in analogue research through the infrastructure, data, and samples offered by scientific ocean drilling programs (Neal et al. 2020). Analog research that expands our understanding of the inner workings of planet Earth, its climate and habitable environments and their evolution through time, and the effects of planetary processes such as impacts, all contribute to our understanding of planets broadly. Developments in the technology associated with scientific ocean drilling also have relevance to planetary exploration at many destinations. The potential exists to further broaden NASA-NSF partnerships on multiple programs relevant to astrobiology, including hydrothermal vent systems and subsurface biospheres, as well as those relevant to ocean worlds, such as ocean–ice and ocean–seafloor interactions (see Chapter 13), physical and chemical oceanography, and marine and ice microbiology.

Despite these many opportunities for collaboration benefiting both NASA and NSF, there is also a recognition that planetary astronomers have had trouble securing funding from NSF in, for example, the NSF Division of Astronomical Sciences program, where work that uses NASA mission data or data from NASA-supported activities/facilities is not permitted or is strongly discouraged. At present, this arrangement means that both NASA and NSF risk losing out on innovative, high-quality scientific research.

In summary, increased NASA and NSF collaborations could enhance both agencies’ missions. This could involve activities such as, but not limited to, development of software tools for use with solar system data from existing and future facilities (e.g., the Rubin Observatory); improving coordination between relevant stakeholders when reviewing proposals to conduct fieldwork in Antarctica and other relevant sites; integrating research from scientific ocean drilling projects into planetary science, and more generally between targets of interest to planetary science, astronomy, astrobiology, and/or geoscience; and providing opportunities for joint support of R&A projects relevant to both agencies.

Recommendation: NASA and NSF would realize greater return on their R&A investments by working together to streamline the mechanisms by which researchers can propose and conduct science that is of benefit to both agencies.

REFERENCES