The next meeting of the SIG 2 will be held on the morning of Mon Jan 4th at 10am EST at the AAS meeting in Kissimmee, FL in the Osceola B room. An agenda will be posted closer to meeting time. The pervading theme of much of the PAG-based discussion at this meeting will be focused on the question of Probe-class missions, and this is something that I'd like you all to think about in the coming 2 – 3 weeks.
There will be a joint meeting of all 3 PAGs at 1pm EST that day with Paul Hertz to hear a number of instructions and charges from him, some continuing the efforts towards a better understanding of Flagship-class missions (that we all worked on last year) and the STDTs to be established to continue that work. But there will also be some discussion about the prospect for Probe-class missions and whether the case can be made for the establishment of a mission line. The definition and scope of such an idea has yet to be defined, but because of the appeal and the ongoing calls for such an intermediate mission class over the last few years from members of the community, we're going to spend some time that Monday talking about the matter.
Immediately following Paul's presentation the three PAGs will have a joint 1-hr open-mic session to hear immediate reactions from the community, and then the PAGs will go their own ways, with the COPAG itself convening its meeting to entertain presentations from the Cosmic Origins community on possible mission ideas that would benefit from such an opportunity. However, this will be open to all members of the COR community, and the science will range away from the UV-visible, so I would like to spend some time that morning doing the same but for SIG2 science.
The COPAG recently solicited white papers on the subject Probe-Class Astrophysics Mission Concepts and therein defined what we currently view a Probe-Class mission as looking like. I encourage you to revisit that information and consider what class of science you could envision proposing for such an opportunity and come prepared for a round-table discussion that morning in Florida on the subject. If you'd like to give a 5-minute summary of your ideas I could see that being a valuable input — please get in touch if you'd like to do this.
I welcome your input and look forward to an animated discussion that morning. Thanks in advance.
Paul Scowen
SIG 2 Chair / COPAG Chair