Roles and Needs of Laboratory Astrophysics in NASA's Space and Earth Science Mission
Nancy Brickhouse, John Cowan, Paul Drake, Steven Federman, Gary Ferland, Adam Frank, Wick Haxton, Eric Herbst, Keith Olive, Farid Salama, Daniel Wolf Savin, Lucy Ziurys
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White Paper submitted by the AAS Working Group on Laboratory Astrophysics (WGLA) to the National Academy of Science, Space Sciences Board, Ad Hoc Committee studying "The Role and Scope of Mission-Enabling Activities in NASA's Space and Earth Science Missions"
Laboratory astrophysics and complementary theoretical calculations are the foundations of astronomy and astrophysics and will remain so into the foreseeable future. The mission enabling impact of laboratory astrophysics ranges from the scientific conception stage for airborne and space-based observatories, all the way through to the scientific return of these missions. It is our understanding of the under-lying physical processes and the measurements of critical physical parameters that allows us to address fundamental questions in astronomy and astrophysics. In this regard, laboratory astrophysics is much like detector and instrument development at NASA. These efforts are necessary for the success of astronomical research being funded by NASA. Without concomitant efforts in all three directions (observational facilities, detector/instrument development, and laboratory astrophysics) the future progress of astronomy and astrophysics is imperiled. In addition, new developments in experimental technologies have allowed laboratory studies to take on a new role as some questions which previously could only be studied theoretically can now be addressed directly in the lab. With this in mind we, the members of the AAS Working Group on Laboratory Astrophysics (WGLA), have prepared this White Paper on the laboratory astrophysics infrastructure needed to maximize the scientific return from NASA's space and Earth sciences program.
In this paper we showcase the importance of understanding and measuring interdisciplinarity and other -disciplinarity concepts for all scientists, the role social sciences have historically played in NASA research and missions, the sparsity of social science interdisciplinarity in space and planetary sciences, including astronomy and astrophysics, while there is an imperative necessity for it, and the example of interdisciplinarity between social sciences and astrobiology. Ultimately we give voice to the scientists across all fields with respect to their needs, aspirations and experiences in t…
This report provides detailed findings on the critical laboratory astrophysics data needs that are required to maximize the scientific return for NASA's current and near-term planned astrophysics missions. It also provides prioritized rankings on said laboratory astrophysics data, generally by waveband. The Report is based on community input gathered at the 2018 NASA Laboratory Astrophysics Workshop (LAW) from presentations, from discussions during workshop breakout sessions, and from other solicited input deemed appropriate by the Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC) obtained prior to and af…
The era of multi-messenger astrophysics has arrived, leading to key new discoveries and revealing a need for coordination, collaboration, and communication between world-wide communities using ground and space-based facilities. To fill these critical needs, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and Marshall Space Flight Center are jointly proposing to establish a virtual Multi-Messenger Astrophysics Science Support Center that focuses entirely on community-directed services. In this article, we describe the baseline plan for the virtual Support Center which will position the community and NASA as…
Second Order Operators (SOOs) are database functions which form secondary queries based on attributes of the objects returned in an initial query; they can provide powerful methods to investigate complex, multipartite information graphs. The NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) has implemented four SOOs, reviews, useful, trending, and similar which use the citations, references, downloads, and abstract text. This tutorial describes these operators in detail, both alone and in conjunction with other functions. It is intended for scientists and others who wish to make fuller use of the ADS databa…
NASA Astrophysics Division funds development of cutting-edge technology to enable its missions to achieve ambitious and groundbreaking science goals. These technology development efforts are managed by the Physics of the Cosmos, Cosmic Origins, and Exoplanet Exploration Programs. The NASA Strategic Astrophysics Technology Program (SAT) was established in 2009 as a new technology maturation program to fill the gap in the Technology Readiness Level range from 3 to 6. Since program inception, 100 SAT grants have been openly competed and awarded, along with dozens of direct-funded projects, leadin…
NASA regards data handling and archiving as an integral part of space missions, and has a strong track record of serving astrophysics data to the public, beginning with the the IRAS satellite in 1983. Archives enable a major science return on the significant investment required to develop a space mission. In fact, the presence and accessibility of an archive can more than double the number of papers resulting from the data. In order for the community to be able to use the data, they have to be able to find the data (ease of access) and interpret the data (ease of use). Funding of archival rese…
Astrophysics spans an enormous range of questions on scales from individual planets to the entire cosmos. To address the richness of 21st century astrophysics requires a corresponding richness of telescopes spanning all bands and all messengers. Much scientific benefit comes from having the multi-wavelength capability available at the same time. Most of these bands,or measurement sensitivities, require space-based missions. Historically, NASA has addressed this need for breadth with a small number of flagship-class missions and a larger number of Explorer missions. While the Explorer program c…
The new NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is designed with a serviceoriented architecture (SOA) that consists of multiple customized Apache Solr search engine instances plus a collection of microservices, containerized using Docker, and deployed in Amazon Web Services (AWS). For complex systems, like the ADS, this loosely coupled architecture can lead to a more scalable, reliable and resilient system if some fundamental questions are addressed. After having experimented with different AWS environments and deployment methods, we decided in December 2017 to go with Kubernetes as our container …
Laboratory Studies for Planetary Sciences. A Planetary Decadal Survey White Paper Prepared by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Working Group on Laboratory Astrophysics (WGLA)
This brief overview stresses the importance of laboratory data and theory in analyzing astronomical observations and understanding the physical and chemical processes that drive the astrophysical phenomena in our Universe. This includes basic atomic and molecular data such as spectroscopy and collisional rate coefficients, but also an improved understanding of nuclear, plasma and particle physics, as well as reactions and photoprocesses in the gaseous and solid state that lead to chemical complexity and building blocks for life. Systematic laboratory collision experiments have provided detaile…
Deep Learning for Astrophysics: An Open Textbook from the NASA Cosmic Origins AI/ML Science and Technology Interest Group
The Ohio State University（俄亥俄州立大学）；Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie（马克斯·普朗克天文学研究所）；The University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian（哈佛-史密森尼天体物理中心）；Institute for Advanced Study（普林斯顿高等研究院）；Flatiron Institute（平顿研究所）；University of Cincinnati（辛辛那提大学）；Westlake University（西湖大学）；NASA Goddard Space Flight Center（美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心）；Massachusetts Institute of Technology（麻省理工学院）
Software is the most used instrument in astronomy, and organizations such as NASA and the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Physics (HITS) fund, develop, and release research software. NASA, for example, has created sites such as code.nasa.gov to share its software with the world, but how easy is it to see what NASA has? Until recently, searching NASA's Astrophysics Data System (ADS) for NASA astronomy research software has not been fruitful. Through its ADAP program, NASA funded the Astrophysics Source Code Library to improve the discoverability of these codes. Adding institutional tags to…
This paper corresponds to an invited oral contribution to the session 5A organised by the IAU inter-commission B2-B5 working group (WG) "Laboratory Astrophysics Data Compilation, Validation and Standardization: from the Laboratory to FAIR usage in the Astronomical Community" at the IAU 2022 General Assembly (GA). This WG provides a platform where to discuss the Findability, Accessibility,Interoperability, Reuse (FAIR) usage of laboratory Atomic and Molecular (A&M) data in astronomy and astrophysics. A&M data play a key role in the understanding of the physics and chemistry of processes in seve…
The commercial SmallSat industry is booming and has developed numerous low-cost, capable satellite buses. SmallSats can be used as vehicles for technology development or to host science missions. Missions hosted on SmallSats can answer specific science questions that are difficult or impossible to answer with larger facilities, can be developed relatively quickly, serve to train engineering and scientists, and provide access to space for small institutions. SmallSats complement larger Astrophysics missions and allow the broader community to test new ideas at the bottom of the market, creating …
The search for life beyond the Solar System-a major part of the Planetary Systems thematic area of the Astro2020 Decadal process-includes the search for technological life. Although financial support for such searches at the NSF and NASA and in past decadal surveys has been weak to nonexistent, recent advances in astrobiology, astrophysics, and advances in technical capability make searches for technosignatures a compelling theme for 2020-2030 and beyond.
We have conducted a data study of leadership and participation in NASA's Astrophysics Explorer-class missions for the nine solicitations issued during the period 2008-2016, using gender as a marker of diversity. During this time, 102 Principal Investigators (PIs) submitted Explorer-class proposals; only four of these PIs were female. Among the 102 PIs, there were 61 unique PIs overall; of these, just three were female. The percentage of females in science teams in these proposals ranges from a low of 10% to a high of 19% across the various solicitations. Combining data from all these Explorer-…
Astronomy and astrophysics are regarded as highly motivating topics for students in primary and secondary schools, and they have been a recurrent and effective resource to inspire passion about science. In fact, during the last years we have witnessed a boost of facilities providing small robotic telescopes for teachers and students to remotely undertake their own observing projects. A step forward is presented here, where we describe the experience of secondary school students attending professional observations of Venus at NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) and, in a second observing …
The future Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) is an accelerator-based international center for fundamental and applied research, which presently is under construction in Darmstadt, Germany. An important part of the program is devoted to questions related to astrophysics, including the origin of elements in the universe and the properties of strongly interacting matter under extreme conditions, which are relevant for our understanding of the structure of neutron stars and the dynamics of supernova explosions and neutron star mergers. The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment …
NASA's Great Observatories have opened up the electromagnetic spectrum from space, providing sustained access to wavelengths not accessible from the ground. Together, Hubble, Compton, Chandra, and Spitzer have provided the scientific community with an agile and powerful suite of telescopes with which to attack broad scientific questions, and react to a rapidly changing scientific landscape. As the existing Great Observatories age, or are decommissioned, community access to these wavelengths will diminish, with an accompanying loss of scientific capability. This report, commissioned by the NASA…
Jupiter's dynamics shapes its cloud patterns but remains largely unknown below this natural observational barrier. Unraveling the underlying three-dimensional flows is thus a primary goal for NASA's ongoing Juno mission that was launched in 2011. Here, we address the dynamics of large Jovian vortices using laboratory experiments complemented by theoretical and numerical analyses. We determine the generic force balance responsible for their three-dimensional pancake-like shape. From this, we define scaling laws for their horizontal and vertical aspect ratios as a function of the ambient rotatio…
Sulfur is the tenth most abundant element in the universe and is known to play a significant role in biological systems. Accordingly, in recent years there has been increased interest in the role of sulfur in astrochemical reactions and planetary geology and geochemistry. Among the many avenues of research currently being explored is the laboratory processing of astrophysical ice analogues. Such research involves the synthesis of an ice of specific morphology and chemical composition at temperatures and pressures relevant to a selected astrophysical setting (such as the interstellar medium or …
The Probe Of Extreme Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (POEMMA) is a NASA Astrophysics probe-class mission designed to observe ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) and cosmic neutrinos from space. Astro2020 APC white paper: Medium-class Space Particle Astrophysics Project.
Here we discuss advances in UV technology over the last decade, with an emphasis on photon counting, low noise, high efficiency detectors in sub-orbital programs. We focus on the use of innovative UV detectors in a NASA astrophysics balloon telescope, FIREBall-2, which successfully flew in the Fall of 2018. The FIREBall-2 telescope is designed to make observations of distant galaxies to understand more about how they evolve by looking for diffuse hydrogen in the galactic halo. The payload utilizes a 1.0-meter class telescope with an ultraviolet multi-object spectrograph and is a joint collabor…
