"What would an imaginary terrestrial observer see as the Sun runs out of hydrogen in the future?"
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Astrobiotechnology Focus Group Activities
First Year Activities
The NAI Focus group is sponsoring two major events in its first year to address issues central to our charter:
The first workshop will focus on science and technology development for the Mars mission to follow on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) ’09 mission. Given the necessity of both defining the science and developing the pertinent instruments, now is the right time to begin this effort. We are sponsoring a cross-disciplinary workshop to bring together both industry and academia in a setting geared towards identifying science and technology needs and capabilities on both sides of the aisle. This will be an open workshop, and we will coordinate with and include participants and managers from the following programs:
• Mars Instrument Development Project (MIDP)
• Planetary Instrument Definition and Development Program (PIDDP)
• Astrobiology Science and Technology Instrument Development (ASTID)
• NASA Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets (ASTEP)
We will also invite those interested in instrument development but who are not funded from these programs and scientists who are interested in defining the directions of the follow-on missions. The workshop is scheduled for September 8-10 in Washington DC. The website for the workshop can be found at http://astrobiotech.arc.nasa.gov/.
The second event will address another major theme of the Focus Group, namely the interaction between those developing bench top proof-of-concept experiments and those responsible for engineering flight instruments starting from state-of-the-art instrumentation from biotechnology. Even with the incorporation of MEMS and microelectronics, these instruments can consume significant resources (1 kg, 20 watts, 1000 cm3 ). We hope to adopt instruments from other commercial sources such as compact analytical instruments and point of care sensors for medical care. All of these will require modifications for a space environment; this workshop will help scientists utilizing these technologies bridge that gap. The title conveys the theme— “How to Build a Flight Instrument “. We will use experienced engineers and instrument developers from JPL, industry and university groups to give tutorials on instrument design, testing and fabrication. One of the major objectives is to inject as much realism as possible early on into the development phase. Early considerations of mechanical requirements for the launch shock and vibration envelop, for example, can prevent painful changes later in the development cycle.
