Workshop Program

Final versions of all talk slides are available here:
IRSTIG Workshop Talk Slides

Video recordings of each day can be found here:
March 30, 2022
March 31, 2022
April 1, 2022

The final version of the workshop schedule is available here:
IRSTIG Workshop Schedule

The workshop program including all talk titles and abstracts is available here:
IRSTIG Workshop Program

There will be small group discussions on each day of the workshop. Participants have been randomly assigned to one of five breakout groups (numbers are on the back of your name badge!) which will address an assigned question and report back to the whole group during the large workshop discussions at the end of each day. The questions that will be discussed each day are:

The Big Picture (Wed Mar 30):

  1. Leaving aside their programmatic recommendations, what near/mid/far-IR obse rvations are best motivated by the key science questions in the decadal survey?
  2. Are there recommendations from the decadal survey that may cause long-term harm to the IR community? How might we remediate these?
  3. What are some IR-focused science cases that could impact the architecture of the next NASA flagship mission? What science investigations do we need to do now to inform the design of a future flagship?
  4. What technologies need urgent development to enable the science of the next decade? In each case, what is the ideal path forward to deploy these technologies in the short- and mid-term?
  5. Are we missing opportunities to grow the IR community? How can we foster interdisciplinary work with other areas of astrophysics and science in general?
Toward a FIR Probe Mission (Thurs Mar 31):

  1. What science could be done by a probe-sized mission that would not be possible with smaller space, sub-orbital, or even ground-based programs?
  2. Suppose that an X-ray probe gets selected in the current competition. How should the IR community move forward to be ready for a call in the 2030s? What science could be done from other platforms and how will we advance technology?
  3. In order to maximize scientific return, how should the probe mission concepts balance survey vs. general observer (GO) science? What is the science trade space and how do we optimize return?
  4. Ultimately, at most one probe-class mission will be selected to fly. How do we foster unity as a community during the proposal process so that we are able to move forward cohesively once a selection is made?
  5. How might a far-IR probe mission influence the science case and design of a future flagship mission? How would this fit into the broader mission landscape and complement sub-orbital platforms?
Sub-Orbital Capabilities and Quandaries (Fri Apr 1):

  1. In the limit that SOFIA ends in 2023, how do we best position ourselves as a community to do excellent mid/far-IR science? What would be the impacts on the IR community’s stability? What specific science areas would stall, if any?
  2. In the limit that SOFIA does not end in 2023, what would be the scientific and technological impacts on the development of potential probe and flagship missions?
  3. What are the scientific and technological justifications to keep SOFIA operating into the next decade? How would it fit into the future landscape of IR experiments?
  4. What new sub-orbital capabilities would best enable the community to do new science and develop new technology?
  5. What role should balloons play in the future landscape of IR experiments? How could balloons be better supported in order to promote our community’s scientific interests and needs?