- Today the House held a hearing on the status and future of exoplanet science. There's a PDF describing the hearing linked at the bottom of this page. Unfortunately I only got the stream to work about 20 minutes in, so the intro stuff is missing, but the stream should be archived so go check that out if you want the full show.
Q: how is the current budget affecting exoplanet research? #house #policy ccc @peterdedmonds @jeff_foust- Ulvestadt: in a constrained environment, research $ to investigators suffer to maintain facilities #house #exoplanets
- As in: it's great to build facilities, but it's getting increasingly difficult to fund people to actually do science on those facilities.
- Edwards asks about upgrades to HST - will we get bang for $ in long run out of JWST if it's not serviceable? #house #exoplanets
- Grunsfeld: JWST needs to be cold - planned for 5 yrs, should get 11 yrs out. #house #exoplanets
- Grunsfeld: we maximize science by having complementary assets operating at same time (eg ALMA, JWST, maybe HST) #house #exoplanets
- Grunsfeld also said here that it was his dream for HST to have some overlap with these facilities.
- Bucshon: ppl who dep on discretionary $ will cont to feel pinch. #house #exoplanets
- Bucshon had a bunch more commentary above about how only the Republicans can save our budgets.
- Grunsfeld: we all have experience of looking at night sky - science inspires us to have vision, to look to the future #house #exoplanets
- Doyle: some ppl in exobio define life as "anything that stores information" - but you have to start w what you know #house #exoplanets
- Lipinski: have you figured out what you're doing w the NRO telescopes yet? #house #exoplanets
- Grunsfeld: not yet. focused on building JWST, then we can think about next missions #house #exoplanets
- Lipinski: what in the way of assets would help w exoplanet research? #house #exoplanets
- Ulvestad: we understand how our assets work together, coordinate to maximize efficiency of funding #house #exoplanets
- Ulvestad: not clear we need a lot of help if we keep talking to each other #house #exoplanets
- Except for extremely limited grant funding, presumably.
- Grunsfeld: coordination is necessary bc we are budget limited #house #exoplanets
- Doyle: SETI institute is a non-profit & there are other small institutions; there r millions participating thru citi sci #house #exoplanets
- Didn't get a name check, but he's referring to planethunters.org!
- Smith: are there other missions we should consider for exoplanet science? or just the ones scoped now? #house #exoplanets
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