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Astronomy Focus Group Activities
The proposed Astronomy Focus Group plans to sponsor workshops on highly specific topics devoted to the sharing of information between astronomers and scientists in overlapping astrobiological disciplines (see below for examples). Such meetings would aid researchers in overlapping disciplines to talk, mutually educate themselves and “cross-over” between the disciplines. The outcome of these workshops will be new avenues of astrobiology research, education of scientists working on similar topics from different directions, and documents that will benefit the astronomy and astrobiology communities. Potential workshop topics include “Cosmochemistry” and “Atmospheric Biomarker Signatures”.
The Astronomy Focus Group also plans for advocacy meetings on specific missions three times a year. Most meetings will be held in Washington DC to enable attendance by NASA HQ members, with some meetings held at other NASA centers such as JPL and NASA Ames Research Center. Each meeting will include a small set of common core members as well as experts on the meeting topic. The outcome of each meeting will be recommendations to NASA, or in a few cases other groups, in the form of a white paper. Suggestions for future meetings will come from NASA HQ and from the Astronomy Focus Group members. In addition to space-based missions, large ground-based projects will be considered because of their astrobiology-related science potential as well as because of their potential impact on NASA mission planning and selection. Below are described a few potential ideas for meetings.
- Astrobiology and JWST (workshop held May 2003 at the CIW)
- Astrobiology with Proposed Origins Probes
- Discovery
- MIDEX
- SMEX Missions
- Astrobiology with SIRTF
- Astrobiology with a 20 to 30 m Telescope
- Astrobiology with ALMA
The final Astronomy Focus Group advisory meeting will use the white papers from the previous three years to summarize astrobiology with NASA missions. The outcome will aid NASA planning for astrobiology by identifying gaps in current and future missions.
The Astronomy Focus Group provides a discussion forum through an email list. The discussions on the list include organization of and reports from workshops and advocacy meetings, as well as debates on astrobiological topics of interest.
