2.3: Science Mission Directorate and Open Government

Provide an overview of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate and Open Government.

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America’s Space Program: Scientific Discoveries for Everyone nasascience.nasa.gov -- Overview For years NASA’s science program has been dedicated to openness, making all information public, and inviting participation in all aspects of NASA’s science program. Early in NASA’s history, we created a policy for all raw science data received from spacecraft to be stored in a publicly accessible archive for future researchers. As researchers conduct NASA-funded experiments, many of the results are published in peerreviewed journals. But more than benefiting from just the results of these efforts, NASA engages the scientific community to help steer our science program in several ways: • Prioritizing destinations of missions. • Targeting future technologies. • Posing the questions to be answered in astrophysics, Earth science, heliophysics, and planetary science. Our flight missions range from suborbital projects—including balloons, sounding rockets, and airplanes—to interplanetary probes and flagship observatories. All investigations and missions selected and flown must respond to science goals and strategic objectives that were crafted by the input from the science community. The majority of the approximately 70 spacecraft currently operating in space are selected after a competition. When we issue an Announcement of Opportunity, this is open for universities, NASA Centers, non-profits, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), industry, and international partners (on a no-exchange-of-funds basis). Finally, we also have a very robust research and analysis program and announce our Research Opportunities in the Space and Earth Sciences (or ROSES) together with other solicitation on the NSPIRES Web site (nspires.nasaprs.com). We use a peer review process to evaluate and select research proposals submitted in response to research announcements and archive previous solicitations and selections on the NSPIRES Web site. We require our missions have robust education and public outreach (E/PO) programs. As policy, each mission dedicates at least one percent of their prime mission cost to E/PO, which equates to approximately $35 million annually. Many of the citizen engagement activities and participatory exploration projects come from the result of this policy. As an example of participatory exploration, through “DAWN Clickworkers” the public can help us count craters on two of the largest minor planets in our solar system—Ceres and Vesta. This information will help us better understand the age and impact history of their surface. We understand the linkage between exciting scientific discovery and the aspirations for students to pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) degrees. As such, we provide university students the opportunity to develop, build, and operate science instruments on NASA spacecraft through our Student Collaboration activity. Initially started as a “bonus” criteria for new missions, we now have a new policy where Principle Investigators on NASA science missions are provided with an incentive (up to 0.5 percent of the cost of the mission) to fund the Student Collaboration. Such efforts could involve the development of an instrument, investigation of scientific questions, data analysis or modeling, development of supporting hardware or software, or other aspects of the mission. As an example, undergraduate students will operate Mooncam, the Student Collaboration on the GRAIL mission and provide the images to middle school students.

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