Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
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F
Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 2023–2032
This appendix collects in a single location the key scientific questions for biological and physical sciences (BPS) space research over the decade 2023–2032 (Table F-1) and the recommendations for BPS space research over the decade 2023–2032 (Table F-2) that is found out at various locations in this report.
TABLE F-1 Key Scientific Questions for Biological and Physical Sciences Space Research Over the Decade 2023–2032
| Themes | Key Scientific Questions |
|---|---|
| Adapting to Space (Chapter 4) |
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| Living and Traveling in Space (Chapter 4) |
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| Probing Phenomena Hidden by Gravity or Terrestrial Limitations (Chapter 5) |
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
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TABLE F-2 Recommendations for Biological and Physical Sciences Space Research Over the Decade 2023–2032
| Chapter | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Framework for Thriving in Space (Chapter 3) | Recommendation 3-1: NASA should direct its research resources toward the key scientific questions identified in this study. |
| Recommendation 3-2: NASA should work with other U.S. government agencies and other nations’ space agencies to coordinate research resources toward the key scientific questions, as relevant to multiple-agency missions. | |
| Recommendation 3-3: As activity in low Earth orbit increases, and lunar and martian missions are increasingly likely, NASA should increase resources dedicated to understanding the answers to these key scientific questions. | |
| Science to Enable Space Exploration (Chapter 4) | Recommendation 4-1: NASA should continue to strengthen the science exchange between the Biological and Physical Sciences Program and the Human Research Program. Such effort may include establishing a coordinating body and shared research initiatives as well as the two-way exchange of technologies, data, mission science, specimen banking, and plans. |
| Recommendation 4-2: NASA should increase resources dedicated to producing and understanding the answers to the key scientific questions that address the transitions to and from space. The committee sees potential for significant advances in space exploration if a biological and physical sciences portfolio in the coming decade is aimed at understanding the biological responses that occur during transitions between the Earth and space environments over extended duration and distance to fundamentally enable space exploration; genetic diversity to understand positive and negative responses and long-term adaptations to spaceflight to accelerate the identification of risks, mechanisms of adaptation, and potential positive adaptations that could improve life in space; and how cells, systems, and organisms concurrently adapt to the spaceflight environment and develop mechanisms for encouraging positive and countering negative communicated responses. | |
Recommendation 4-3: To ensure the long-term survival of life in the spaceflight environment, NASA should ramp up investigations into space impacts on sustained human presence in space by investigating
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| Science Enabled by the Space Environment (Chapter 5) |
Recommendation 5-1: NASA should substantially increase resources dedicated to producing and understanding the answers to the key scientific questions detailed in this report. This investment recognizes the potential for significant societal impacts utilizing the space environment for the biological and physical sciences portfolio in the coming decade, aimed at
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
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| Chapter | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Recommendation 5-2: For fundamental physics in space, NASA should facilitate durable formation of collaborations and efficient knowledge transfer between researchers working in multi-disciplinary teams. This scope to address these multi-decadal key scientific questions should include ground-based infrastructure, theoretical and experimental physics, precision measurement and technology development with private sector participants, and should be coordinated with missions in which biological and physical sciences research is one among several whole-of-government objectives. | |
| Recommendation 5-3: In all of the space-enabled research areas, NASA should allocate funding with an anticipation that new directions of research may arise. | |
| Research Campaigns (Chapter 6) |
Recommendation 6-1: NASA should pursue dedicated research campaigns that, through the coming decade, will drive resolution to specific groups of key scientific questions. Coordination beyond NASA, including other federal agencies and the private sector as well as public–private partnerships, should be considered for the dedicated new funding and materials to support these research campaigns.
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| Recommendation 6-2: NASA should pursue development of the Probing the Fabric of Space Time (PFaST) initiative in this decade only if it can obtain substantial (greater than 75 percent) funding from external (i.e., other than NASA) sources. | |
| Strategy and Challenges (Chapter 7) |
Recommendation 7-1: Because the nation benefits from global leadership in space science and technology, and given the emergence of commercial platforms that can be tasked to the nation’s science, NASA should
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| Recommendation 7-2: To maintain research campaign momentum, NASA should require external advisory committees to evaluate research campaign team progress and emergent technologies annually. | |
Recommendation 7-3: Because key questions identified in this study benefit from access to multiple spaceflight-related platforms, the Biological and Physical Sciences Program should
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| Recommendation 7-4: Because key scientific questions identified in this study support the effective utilization of, and benefit from access to, deep-space exploration platforms, NASA should ensure that scientific opportunities are maximized within the range of spaceflight and spaceflight-related platforms intended for lunar, cislunar, and Mars transit solutions. |
Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
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| Chapter | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Recommendation 7-5: The U.S. government, including NASA, should develop and maintain sufficient ground-based infrastructure to validate and support biological and physical sciences missions. Some of these facilities already exist and simply need to be upgraded, while others have yet to be conceived and built. | |
Recommendation 7-6: NASA should continue to expand the investment in open and shared computational infrastructure (CI) to support storage, analysis, and dissemination of its biological and physical data, while ensuring linkage to the original and archived samples.
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Recommendation 7-7: NASA should work with the other appropriate U.S. government agencies with a goal to establish an office or a mechanism for commercial sponsorship and collaboration with nonprofit organizations, including academia and government research agencies. That office/mechanism should have the primary focus of
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Recommendation 7-8: NASA should work with appropriate government agencies to establish clear guidelines for international collaborations within the biological and physical sciences—in particular, for support of non-U.S. students and scholars, to balance two goals:
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| Recommendation 7-9: To retire many of the key scientific questions by the end of the decade, NASA should establish support for the Biological and Physical Sciences Program to levels that reflect the current national need and to build the science community in size, diversity of technical expertise and lived experience, and capability to reach the science goals of the nation, toward levels that are an order of magnitude above the current funding and well before the end of the decade. | |
| Recommendation 7-10: To maintain a viable scientific community, the numerical majority of supported principal investigators (i.e., fraction of research team leaders) should be extramural (i.e., not NASA employees), and funding levels should be commensurate with addressing the key scientific questions. | |
| Recommendation 7-11: NASA should establish periodic reviews of selected research campaigns to ensure coordinated access to the space environment, publicly communicated progress on research milestones, and facilitation of collaborations and public–private partnerships as required to meet these ambitious goals. | |
| Recommendation 7-12: NASA should identify mechanisms to compete new or additional research campaigns within 5 years, in light of anticipated changes to access to low Earth orbit and the inevitable but unknown changes in research, technology, funding, and space mission directives that will ensue after this report is issued. |
Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
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| Chapter | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Recommendation 7-13: NASA should ensure diversity, equity, inclusivity, and accessibility in the pursuit of the nation’s space exploration science priorities, including instituting a requirement of documented progress in diversity among NASA-sponsored research teams seeking multi-year funding or multiple sponsorship requests over the coming decade. This inclusivity should be intentionally broad in concept, with respect to visible and less visible characteristics of historically underrepresented groups in BPS research and leadership. | |
| Recommendation 7-14: Project grants should be funded at levels and duration consistent with the project aims with full support for trainees (postdoctorates, graduate students, and undergraduates), including travel for trainees and principal investigators to support the mission and participate in scientific meetings. Full funding representing the total costs of research (direct and indirect) is imperative to be inclusive of participation by all trainees. |
Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
×
Suggested Citation:"Appendix F: Key Scientific Questions and Recommendations for BPS Space Research Over the Decade 20232032." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Thriving in Space: Ensuring the Future of Biological and Physical Sciences Research: A Decadal Survey for 2023-2032. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/26750.
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