Ken's Comments on Verne's Outline

Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 13:39:16 -0400
From: Kenneth Jezek 
To: harry@apl.washington.edu
CC: asfuwg.plus@juneau.gi.alaska.edu

I took a quick look at the Science Plan.  My opinion is that it is not a
science plan.  A science plan would begin by defining some overarching
scientific issues and questions that could be answered using SAR and
other data sets.  It would go on to provide scientific requirements that
would be used by ASF in their development.

I think the document is instead an 'operational' strategy for ASF.  It
describes ASF capabilities and services.  It shows how ASF fits into the
research picture in Fairbanks.  It will also discuss some scientific
opportunities.  I suspect that this is generally the correct approach in
affirming ASF as a 'facility'.  The challenge is to make sure that the
strategy is closely tied to NASA defined requirements.  In the SAR
world, I am not sure who at NASA is in charge of compiling or specifying
those requirements.   If the requirements are clarified, maybe the
purpose of this document is to answer the question, what and how is ASF
contributing to the NASA ESE effort?  Maybe it should be cast more as a
5 year status report with a 5 year projection on new activities?

In the history section (maybe Ben can add to this), you might note that
the original idea for locating in Fairbanks was to maximize reach out
over the arctic ocean in support of sea ice studies (not as stated to
optimize access to data from a host of satellites - I think I remember
that correctly).  I mention that to illustrate the point that we started
with a science plan focusing on sea ice problems and suggested how they
could be solved by contructing ASF.  Today we have a more capable and
well established ASF.  Maybe the document needs to specify which science
issues it is uniquely qualified to address.  In other words, given 12
years of improvements in the links between the sensor and the user,
where does ASF provide a critical and unique function.  Examples could
be rapid and reliable processing of gigantic data sets, timely
opportunities for downlinking data from a constellation of satellites.
These could then be tied to science requirements for specific
programs.

Ken