The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will appoint an ad hoc committee to conduct a study to inform NASA’s future investments in suborbital airborne facilities, with a particular focus on the role of “large” airborne facilities, such as the current NASA DC-8, whose lifetime is limited and for which a potential replacement in the 2025 time frame may be required. In addition, there is interest in how newly available platforms (currently flying, or on track toward availability for scientific use with all necessary development funding in place), especially those associated with Uninhabited Airborne Systems (UASs) and advanced balloon technology, may serve as the airborne component for integrated scientific studies.

The committee will organize a community workshop at which participants will be asked to present specific examples of how airborne platforms could make unique and/or optimal contributions to integrated (satellite/airborne/surface/modeling) approaches to answering the science questions posed in the 2017 ESAS Decadal Survey, with a special emphasis on large platforms (e.g., those that can carry multiple instruments and investigators for their on-board operation). Drawing upon discussions at the workshop, the committee will author a short consensus report on key themes that emerged in the workshop presentations. Specifically, the report will address:

• What emerging science/research questions can be best addressed with large platforms as the airborne component for the integrated studies?
• Which of these science questions might be well-suited to combinations of smaller platforms for their airborne component should a large platform not be available? What is the loss to science if the airborne component needed to be done through a combination of one or more smaller-sized aircraft?
• How might newly available suborbital platforms (especially UASs and advanced technology balloons) similarly contribute to integrated studies addressing these scientific questions?
• Are there additional benefits to the Earth Science and Applications activities for the airborne platforms under consideration here beyond their role in the integrated studies focused on helping to answer the questions identified in the Decadal Survey? This could include their use in process studies, technology demonstrations for new instruments to be deployed on space-based platforms, calibration and validation of space-based observations, and the opportunities for early career scientists to have hands-on experience in building and deploying instruments.