The Science Opportunities for the Warm Spitzer Mission: Workshop Purpose

The questions that we will pose to the workshop are:

Is the science return from a Spitzer Warm Mission sufficiently compelling to warrant continuing the operations in the Post-Cryogen era? If yes, for how long?
What is a reasonable size distribution for larger projects (100 - 5000 hr projects)?
How often should large projects be selected, balancing the need for scientific timeliness with the need for reduced cost operations?
What fraction of time in the Warm Spitzer mission should be devoted to small (<100 hrs) projects?
How often should Proposal Calls be solicited for such (small) projects? Is a normal Great Observatory TAC appropriate, necessary for these? What other cost-effective ways are there to select the small projects?
Should we do HDF-like projects in warm mission [executed by SSC, immediately available data, SSC produces higher level products rapidly, substantial archival funding for research with these data sets] (range is 0-2 for first 2 years)? If yes, what should these projects be?
Are there large projects of compelling science priority that should be specially encouraged in the Call (without guarantee of selection of one proposal), but where proposals are felt to be the best way to select the science team?
Are there projects of sufficient science importance and community interest that would argue that even larger commitments of observing time should be considered (> 5000 hrs)? If so how might these projects be selected?

To support this process the SSC will provide inputs to the committee early in the process, including a description of Spitzer's post-cryo restrictions and capabilities and briefly outlining a few possible large projects, plus a strawman discussion of plausible budgets and staffing (relatively concrete for first two years of extended mission), and our expectations as to when the first calls for extended mission projects will be.

We want the steering committee members to:

Develop white papers (with scientific colleagues) on science area (3-10 pages). White paper content:
1. Science Drivers
2. Potential Contribution of Warm Spitzer Data
3. Scope of data collection required (area or # of targets, sensitivity, cadence of observations, any non-standard modes)
4. Possibly unique data analysis requirements
Participate in review of the final report product from the workshop, and possibly participate in the presentation to a "senior independent panel" that the SSC will convene to assess our planning for the Warm Spitzer mission.

White Papers are due the first week of May 2007; committee report due shortly thereafter (this provides "strawman" answers to questions & input to workshop).

by help - at - spitzer.caltech.edu