Today was day 4 and the last day of GPRV in Oxford. The day ended with a discussion led by Heather Cegla (Warwick) and Jennifer Burt (JPL) about EPRV and national priorities. Exoplanet science is obviously extremely important to the 2021 Decadal Survey, but in detail, the first seven chapters of that Survey (the chapters to which NASA and NSF must respond) do not actually mention radial velocity! The conversation in the room today was extremely wide-ranging; it covered hardware, software, science goals, and community-building goals. But it also covered months, years, and decade-long time-scales.
The highest level recommendation of the Decadal Survey was that we need to do preparatory work to design and assess feasibility of a large IR–visible–UV telescope that will discover habitable worlds. There is no doubt (I think it's uncontroversial) that this preparatory work will require lots and lots of EPRV science and observations. Of course the fact that this is obvious is separated somewhat from the question of whether there will be abundant funding!
It will come as no surprise to my loyal reader that I was a proponent, in this discussion, of building open-science communities around open data, open-source software, and open science collaborations. I think we have so much evidence now that open-science communities science way better. What I loved is that there were absolutely no objections in the room to this idea. The only controversies were about exactly how open data should be managed and released in that utopian future. I'm optimistic about this business!
And I thank Suzanne Aigrain (Oxford) and her OC for a great meeting!
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