Dear members of the SOFIA community,

The President's budget request for NASA in FY2016 (starting 2015 October 1) was released in early February.  The budget request included surprising language pertaining to SOFIA, directing the program to undergo a science-based "Senior Review" in early 2016.  This timescale is years earlier than when the program was anticipating its first such evaluation, and this mandate comes only one year after SOFIA successfully achieved Full Operational Capability, the equivalent of a space mission launch.  The review will assess the science productivity and potential of SOFIA, and the cost effectiveness of achieving that science. 

While the program had already started implementing practices to increase the science productivity of SOFIA, these plans have been impacted substantially by the 20% budget reduction in the Congressional authorization for the current fiscal year.  Hence, it is even more important that the collective SOFIA community, particularly the existing instrument teams and general investigators, do everything within reason to increase their efforts at completing scientific analysis of useful data and publishing those results.  While the Senior Review will focus on the science potential for 2017-2020, the peer-review committee will naturally look to the past as one predictor of the future.

The SOFIA Science Center has been in contact with many of the Cycle-1 and Cycle-2 investigators to solicit feedback on the impediments to analyzing and publishing existing data, and to help identify potentially newsworthy results that could merit a media release.  Moreover, planning is under way for an expedited third-generation science instrument solicitation.

There is a sense of urgency to assemble a competitive Senior Review proposal in the next eleven months.  There are three ways you can help the SOFIA team to achieve that objective: (1) submit an observing proposal to the upcoming Cycle-4 proposal solicitation that makes use of the unique SOFIA capabilities; (2) if you have been awarded SOFIA observing time, publish your science results as rapidly as feasible and inform the SOFIA program of the papers; and (3) contact us to explore ways of recognizing your science results through science press releases or as web features.  If you have existing data, but do not expect to be able to complete the analysis and submit results for publication by September 2015, please contact the SOFIA Science Center (see contact info below): we would like to hear what your specific challenges are and work with you on a strategy that would lead to a publication in time for incorporation into the Senior Review report. 

In addition to the above specific areas, the SOFIA Program encourages general feedback from the community.  If you have suggestions for ways in which SOFIA could improve its service to you (user support, level of interaction with the community, or any other component of the Program), ways in which SOFIA could become more suitable for your research (science instrument availability, data products, etc.), or "out of the box" thinking that could maximize SOFIA's science productivity in general, please do not hesitate to contact us.  Alternatively, feel free to provide your feedback through the members of our community councils, the SOFIA Users Group and the SOFIA NASA Observatory and Program Assessment Council (see below links).  If you could benefit from assistance with a technical aspect of data analysis or with the development of a proposal concept for Cycle 4, the SOFIA Science Center Help Desk is available to help you.

Best Regards,

Pamela M. Marcum
SOFIA Project Scientist
pamela.m.marcum@nasa.gov
650-604-3011

Erick Young
Director, SOFIA Science Mission Operations
eyoung@sofia.usra.edu
650-604-3497

SOFIA Mission Links:

SOFIA mission page:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/SOFIA

SOFIA Science Center:
www.sofia.usra.edu

SOFIA Help Desk
sofia_help@sofia.usra.edu

Community Councils:
SOFIA NASA Observatory and Program Assessment Council
http://sofia.usra.edu/Science/councils/snopac/index.html

SOFIA Users Group
http://sofia.usra.edu/Science/advisorygroups/sug/index.html