Science community has its say on LISA future

Read about the first townhall meeting of the National Academies' Beyond Einstein review committee - the body which will decide which of the Beyond Einstein missions, including LISA, will get priority and fly first.

As the Beyond Einstein Program Assessment Committee (BEPAC) gathers data on the different missions that are part of NASA's "Beyond Einstein" program, in preparation for the decision which of the missions will be the first to fly, it solicits input and assessments not only from mission representatives, but also from the wider scientific community.   To this end, BEPAC hosted the first of a series of townhall meetings on Thursday, February 1, in Newport Beach, California. The meeting began with an outline of the committee's official charge by BEPAC co-chair Charles Kennel. A subset of the BEPAC committee formed a panel to officially hear and discuss input from the public (about 15 speakers chosen from a slightly larger number of formally submitted one-sentence abstracts). Each speaker was given five minutes to address the committee. Speakers who voiced support for LISA included Albert Lazzarini (LIGO), Brent Ware (JPL), Kip Thorne (Caltech), Harald Pfeiffer (Caltech) and Mark Scheel (Caltech). Support also came from other speakers who had favorable words for multiple projects.

Further townhall meetings are also being held in Cambridge, MA (12 Feb); Baltimore, MD (14 March); and Chicago, IL (4 April).  Since this is a great opportunity for members of the LISA International Science Community to voice their support, we encourage all of you to participate in these meetings if you have a chance to do so. Meeting details, links for registration, and links for contributing general comments can be found at the official BEPAC website. Some of the materials prepared by the LISA Project as input to the committee, including the LISA Science Case document, can be found in the resources section of this portal.

The Townhall meeting in Newport beach followed two days of partially public meetings of the full committee. On Tuesday, January 30, the BEPAC heard formal oral responses from each of the competing missions (JDEM, Black Hole Finder Probe, Inflation Probe, LISA, and Con-X) to a series of written questions. Each response lasted approximately 45 minutes, and was followed by an equal time of further questions by the BEPAC. Speaking for LISA were Robin Stebbins (GSFC), Nick Jedrich (GSFC), Mansoor Ahmed (GSFC), and Alberto Gianolio (ESA). Following their presentations, they were joined by Tom Prince (JPL, Caltech) and Karsten Danzmann (Hannover University and Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics) before responding to questions from the BEPAC. On Wednesday, January 31, the public portion of the BEPAC's meeting consisted of three one-hour invited science talks. Chryssa Kouveliotou (MSFC) spoke about Gamma-ray Bursts and the Transient High Energy Sky, Mitchell Begelman (JILA, University of Colorado, Boulder) spoke on Cosmic Feedback and the Growth of Structure, and Steven Allen (Stanford) spoke on Cluster Observations at High Energy.

Future full-committee BEPAC meetings will be held in Chicago, IL (5-7 April) and in Washington, DC (6-8 June). Details for these meetings are forthcoming, and will be posted on the official BEPAC website.