Eric Mamajek for Karl Stapelfeldt
ExEP Science Update

This has been a tough week.
I gotta say.
Carl should be here. He's.
He's dealing with some stuff.
Jen is also so it's it's hitting a lot of us.
Sorry.
Anyway, I wanna thank Carl for getting his slides together and I'm I'm covering as his deputy.
We also have our Jenn Burt on here.
Who's who's from the extreme precision radar velocity? RCN, our postdoc Emily Gilbert.
And you'll notice Katherine Clark has just been retired off of this chart.
She's just been hired at NExScI a few months ago.
And she was important part of the program the last couple of years here. And I'm Anjali Tripathi is here.
All sales are science ambassador.
Next slide.
So we just wrapped up the edits on the ExEP science gap list.
This was we were hoping to get it posted this week.
But it should be on the.
ExEP science website here in a few days it's going to go through signature cycle. So a few of our except headquarters folks, you may have an e-mail in your box to put this into the signature cycle. This is not a strategic document.
This is a tactical document.
We're we're feeding off of the decadal and NASA strategic goals.
These are these are sort of tactical scientific areas that the program feels needs work in terms of theory, lab measurement, simulations and and more observations. We started this list probably about six years ago.
I think this is about the 5th edition of it.
And you know, this is for you also as a resource when you're writing your proposals, if you want to.
You know, point out their strategic value of your work.
Please, you know you can refer to it and say, hey, the the program thinks it's important.
Give me money to go do my awesome science.
We don't provide the solutions. We're not telling you what to do. We're just telling you what the needs are to help the current portfolio and the future portfolio of NASA projects.
So it's not all inclusive of all exoplanet science, it's specifically for things relevant for.
NASA missions and programs.
I'd really like to thank the ExoPAG EC for providing inputs. We got a lot of great inputs this year and I'll I'll talk a little bit about those.

And also from the the HWO scientist we really got some great input from them as well.
So this is now blown up to a 55 page document.
Whoops.
There we go. OK.
So this is the current table of contents.
Let's see, we've just added a new gap on understanding planet formation and disk properties.
Each one has a title, summary, capability needed, capability today sort of state-of-the-art.
What mitigations that we're aware of in progress on these, but we do not provide the mitigations not in progress.
You we want you to go be creative and propose for those.
So I'd like to thank EC member Thomas Beatty.
Thomas, are you here?
Hey, there he is. Thank you.
He's sort of spearheaded providing some great input on a new gap we had been discussing.
This is a gap for a while and it hadn't quite crystallized in terms of needs for other NASA initiatives.
And I really like to thank Thomas for taking the the lead on this and and and we got it polished up and gotten into this last version.
So we have a new planet formation disc properties gap.
And this is sort of relevant now with all the the, the surge and the JWST results. Spherix is going to be launched in February.
Go sphere X.
And there's a lot of progress to be made relevant for for understanding how planets form and evolve.
We last time we had a gap 16, a new gap on biosignatures. As soon as you put a new gap out there, you start taking bullets from the community on people from people that didn't provide input the first time.
So we got a lot of great input this time.
And and also from from HWO relevant to interpreting.
Biosignatures with with HWO, so we got a lot of did a lot of rewriting on that gap and we changed the name of 10 a little bit to include analysis for direct imaging targets, not just new observations but.
New analysis that needs to be done.
So thank you to everybody who provided input.
One of the things I wanted to point out is.
For Exopag, we've started spreadsheet for coordinating inputs to the NASA Astrobiology White Paper called the DARES.
Please check this out.
I think our access is limited and what's that?
And Rachel Harris is giving a talk today on DARES. Is Rachel here?
Yay, Rachel's here.
OK. So you'll be hearing more about DARES later?
But anyway please.
Try to coordinate.
They certainly didn't put, I believe, by the end of February for DARES.
Carl and I had worked on this.
ExEP target list. This was sort of just a seed. Initial precursor science work for the for Habworld's observatory. This is sort of a 2023 effort.
Predating starts and tag, I'll also be speaking about this later with a different hat, which is Co chair of the HWO Science Working Group Sub Working Group on on target stars and systems. But I just want to acknowledge that this is this report has come in handy. We.
Had a lot of citations to this people been referencing it in in proposals.
And it's formed the core of our tier one target list from the Hwo working group side.
There's a new.
Of graphics effort taking place, we're gonna have this target star catalog material online soon. I think I might hear about this about the except booth also, but this will be the website for it actually. Anjali you got.
It'll come online, OK.
It's supposed to come online very soon.
I think it's going through its last checks with with headquarters, but I think it's basically ready to go.
So this is tying in our eyes on exoplanets content with material related to the nearest bright stars that make will make great targets for for hwo for planet imaging.
And this is just a preview of what it looks like for beta Hydro.
One of our famous nearby bright stars.
Just want to advertise this just came out this the next spirit of Leo conference will actually be in Pasadena next February, 13 months from now. This is just this great series of of meetings on chronograph technology, exoplan imaging and spectroscopy theory related to disks and exoplanets these have.
Been a lot of fun.
They take place every few years.
So anyway, we just want to advertise it.
This will be taking place next year at Caltech.
And I put together this because I have a really tough time navigating AA S meetings.
This was the whole this is what spurred us in the first place.
I have a tough time with the app.
I literally need a piece of paper telling me where to go the week of the AA S.
So this this apdf of this just was in your mailbox for the exopag and I believe there's paper copies floating around, so I hope you find it useful.
OK.
Thank you very much.
Erica and for the.
Except office more generally.
Jonathan Lane, jpl.
Can you explain in a little bit more detail how the gap document was put together?
How you decided where the knowledge gaps were, who you pulled in to write those elements?
This first start around 2018, you know, we had a lot of discussions in the program office. We had we had, we've been pulling the Exopag EC we've asked for.
We sent invitations on the EXOPAG announced e-mail list for for.
Updates every year.
The the document itself, Carl and I go on a writing retreat about every September and literally update have to concentrate on updating the document and then it gets reviewed by our headquarters colleagues and if we miss something, our EXOPAG members pointed out to us and say, you know.
You really ought to have something on X and out of those we had an initial dozen and I think we're up to 17 now.
Some of them are just big.
There's that.
You know, exoplanets is such a interdisciplinary topic.
There's topics on the periphery of it related to Earth science, Helio, planetary science, physics, chemistry.
Lab, Astro and so some of them are so big, you know, astrobiology itself.
Search for life. Understanding the formation of life.
Those are entire topics.
So it's been it's been.
We've we've tried to. We've tried to get bite sized Nuggets of science on the related to exoplanet science and turn into individual GAAP topics.
And I certainly encourage you to reach out and look it over, see if there's other big things we're missing.
But in recent years, we've added biosignatures, planetary interiors and atmospheres.
Chemical properties, aerosols and atmospheres. Things like that.
And then recently planet formation.
This was a topic that was brewing for a while and we were trying to put it into a format that made it made sense so.
Maybe Eric, you can also mention that every year there is a possibility for the.
I mean, there is always a possibility to provide input, but you make announcements through the Exopag mailing list, right?
So for the community to provide input. So that's another reason you want to be subscribed to that list.
We we try to send homework assignments out to the UC members to see if we can especially get inputs from them.
You know, especially on topics that they're they're very familiar with, but.
Yeah, we didn't have one last year.
Last edition was 2023, but yeah, we we sent a lot of notices out to seeking input on these.
Any other questions?
Any questions online?
Q&A.
OK.
It seems not.
So let's thank Eric again and then thank you.