1 Universities Space Research Association Introduction, Charter and Feedback Eric Becklin SSSC 18 Feb 2010

2 Universities Space Research Association Outline  Introduction  The SSSC Membership and Charter  Feedback on last months meeting and recommendations

3 Universities Space Research Association Introduction  This is the 42nd SSSC meeting of the SOFIA Program.  I want to welcome everyone, especially the new members.  From my standpoint this group is important for providing Science advice on technical science trade offs.  It is also important for getting the pulse of the US and German Science community relative to SOFIA.  I personally feel this is the most important advisory group that SOFIA has.  You are the real stake holders in SOFIA: The Science Users.

4 Universities Space Research Association Introduction  Over the last several meetings, it has been mentioned by some members that they do not feel that they understand their purpose and that we are not making use of their talents.  We take this information very seriously.  We have attempted to structure the presentation to have a more obvious role for the SSSC members.  We also would like to review the SSSC charter with the members today.  Finally, we would like to give you feedback from the previous meeting with respect to some of your recommendations.

5 Universities Space Research Association Membership (From the USRA SOFIA Website 2003) Members on the SSSC are selected from potential future users of SOFIA, a mix of observers and science instrument developers. At any time there are approximately 10 SSSC members; at least 20% of whom are from the German science community. All SOFIA science instrument developers are ex-officio members, if not full members. Membership on the SSSC is for a 3 year term.

6 Universities Space Research Association Present Members  Mark Morris (Co-Chair)  Urs Graf (Co-Chair  Bob Gehrz  Margaret Meixner  Ted Bergin  Imka De Pater  Bill Reach  Keith Noll  John Bally  Alfred Krabbe  Instrument PI’s

7 Universities Space Research Association Charter (From 2003 USRA/SOFIA website) 1) Reviews technical progress on SOFIA, including instrument development, and works with the SOFIA Team on key technical and scientific issues. 2) Works with the Chief Scientist on science tradeoffs for SOFIA. All issues with respect to significant scientific tradeoffs, as determined by either the SOFIA Chief Scientist or the NASA Project Scientist, will be brought to the SSSC for consideration. 3) Ensures that the standards and specifications for interfaces between instruments, observatory and scientists are modern, appropriate, friendly, effective, and trouble-free. 4) Assesses community needs in order to recommend which instruments should be designed, or phased in as facility instruments, and which instruments need to be encouraged as P.I. instruments.

8 Universities Space Research Association Charter  5) Weighs the costs, cost-savings and science productivity benefits of having common facility equipment and makes appropriate recommendations to the Chief Scientist. 6) Motivates the science perspective at the SSMOC by making recommendations for scientific personnel to USRA and to the SOFIA Chief Scientist. 7) Recommends standards for design and development of science instruments. Recommends technologies common to multiple science instruments for joint (or non-P.I.) development. 8) Recommends use of contingency funds for facility instruments.

9 Universities Space Research Association Charter 9) Develops archiving standards; considers ways of improving access to archived data; advises on the budget priority of the archiving activity. 10) Coordinates linkages between scientific activities and outreach/education.

10 Universities Space Research Association Reporting and other considerations Reports to: USRA SOFIA Chief Scientist Co-Chaired by USRA, SOFIA Project scientist, DLR Telescope scientist (Note: this was changed several years ago) Term of Appointment: Three years, twice renewable. Duration: Serves from contract award until the formation of the SOFIA Users Committee. This committee will evolve into the SOFIA Users Committee Active during operations phase, convened by the SOFIA Observatory Director Frequency of Approximately once every third month, with telephonic meetings and conversations probable.

11 Universities Space Research Association Feedback to the SSSC  After the last meeting the SSSC Co-Chairs gave a verbal and written report to me and other Science Managers.  We appreciate very much this input from the SSSC  We would like to give some feedback on a few of the more important comments  This is done on the next few slides

12 Universities Space Research Association Feedback to the SSSC  The primary recommendation of the SSSC was that the Senior Science staff spend more time at the DAOF and get more involved in the complete SOFIA project  This is a very important comment from the SSSC and Senior Science Management (Erick Young, Pam Marcum and I) take it very seriously.  I have personally changed the priority on my time and now spend about 25% of my time at the DAOF. In the future, I plan to continue this and I am relocating my permanent residence from Mountain View to Antelope Valley.  Erick and Pam have also increased significantly their presence at the DAOF. This has been been particularly successful with strategy and planning meetings over the past few months where the Science Project, Platform Project, and the Program have interacted successfully. (This will be discussed further by Mina Cappuccio)

13 Universities Space Research Association Feedback  The SOFIA project is not effectively using the SSSC  We have restructured the meeting to attempt to make it clearer where SSSC input is expected.

14 Universities Space Research Association Feedback  SOFIA is losing the Science Community  We agree. We have a portion of this as part of the SCTF report, but lets also continue this discussion in the open session later in the meeting. We did have 120 people at the Jan 10 AAS meeting with many young investigators. We are planning a science and future instrument workshop at Asilomar on 6,7 and 8 June 2010 (B-G Andersson will cover). The SCTF remains very successfully active (Bob Gehrz will cover)

15 Universities Space Research Association Summary  The SSSC is and remains a very critical advisory group to the SOFIA projects and program  The Charter seems to reflect much of the activity of the SSSC  Some changes need to be made as we transfer to the SOFIA Users Group over the next year or so. The Charter will need to be upgraded and we will ask the SSSC members to help in this effort.  Feedback from the SSSC is very important and we hope the two way interaction continues and increases.  Thank you for your continued support and efforts on behalf of SOFIA