A Performance Assessment of NASA's Heliophysics Program (2009) / Chapter Skim
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The Integrated Research Strategy provided a prioritized list of flight missions and theory and modeling programs that would advance the relevant physical theories, incorporate those theories in models that describe a system of interactions between the Sun and the space environment, obtain data on the system, and analyze and test the adequacy of the theories and models. As directed by Congress in the NASA Authorization Act of 2005, the purpose of this report is to assess the progress of NASA's Heliophysics Division at the 5-year mark against the NASA goals and priorities laid out in the decadal survey.
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Chapter 3 of this report provides recommendations about how NASA can better fulfill the 2003 decadal survey and improve future decadal surveys in solar and space physics. ASSESSMENT In Chapter 2 of this report the Committee on Heliophysics Performance Assessment evaluates NASA's progress against the 2003 decadal survey recommendations.
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In addition, decisions to reorder the mission sequence recommended in the decadal survey undermined the Integrated Research Strategy set forth in the decadal survey, which was built around a set of spacecraft missions coordinated to afford opportunities to examine complex, interacting Sun-Earth subsystems from different regions simultaneously. The originally conceived program cannot be recovered before the next decadal survey.
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However, NASA programs have emphasized elementary-school and public education despite the decadal survey recommendation that educational efforts should focus on college and university-level training, a goal that remains poorly addressed. Strengthening the Solar and Space Physics Research Enterprise Grade: C Finding: Some initiatives to strengthen the solar and space physics enterprise have made progress.
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Solar Probe Program Grade: A Finding: NASA is to be commended for reconstituting the Solar Probe science definition team and producing a Solar Probe Plus mission implementation plan that could be conducted with a restricted cost profile. Although its mission design is promising, Solar Probe Plus sequencing is in conflict with the decadal survey, which conditioned Solar Probe implementation on the implementation of all the moderate missions recommended in the survey or on a budget augmentation to accelerate Solar Probe implementation.
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However, reductions in Explorer Program funding have reduced the mission flight rate from one or more missions per year at the time of the decadal survey to one mission every 4 years, with serious implications for the vitality and balance of programs within the Heliophysics Division. The reinstatement of the Small Explorer and Mission of Opportunity competition in 2007 reversed a downward trend but has not restored funding to levels assumed by the decadal survey.
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If no budget augmentation is forthcoming that is large enough to support the planned Solar Probe launch date of 2017 without impacting other Heliophysics Division missions, NASA should consult with the community through a formal review mechanism (such as committees of the NASA Advisory Council or other independent, external, community priority-setting bodies) to determine Solar Probe's priority relative to that of other decadal survey recommendations and its launch date.
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Changes in management mode and in associated overhead costs that depart from the original decadal survey should be matched by changes in mission budgets. Other Recommendations to Fulfill the Decadal Survey In addition to the Integrated Research Strategy, the 2003 decadal survey provided guidance on science challenges and made other recommendations on technology development, societal effects, education and public outreach, and supporting activities.
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Guideline 6: The next decadal survey should explicitly budget for all recommendations, not just those associated with missions, mission operations and data analysis, and research. Guideline 7: The next decadal survey should maintain the practice of providing a prioritized consensus list of program recommendations.
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