Telecon Notes May 9, 2018

Attendance: Amy, Shaul, Al

Notes by: Karl

• Report from workshop + Action Items
• Other items for the near future
  • Final imager configuration and sensitivity, final cryogenic assessment still pending
  • Requirements vs best case estimates
  • TeamX slide review
  • Scheduling of final TeamX session (Funding at JPL runs out at the end of fiscal year).

Report from workshop + Action Items

• SH: p 7. From Steve Ritz, planning for decadal. NASA talking delay due to JWST delay. If no delay, white papers this year (science papers). Project papers ~ 1 year after that.
• SH: p 9. PICO-S4 tension discussion. could submit a single set of CMB science papers, not advocating for particular projects at that point.
  • SH: when project papers called for, could also have complementarity paper.
  • SH: quotes on p 10.
  • AK: need to be a clear space case, or NASA may conclude that ground can do it all and not support CMB space resources.
    • SH: funding may be different this decade if Probe-class is funded. Then competition is in Probe funding call.
      • AK: NASA tries to follow decadal strategic priorities. CMB needs to be in this list as support for future proposals. A PIXIE response was ground observations could take away much of the value. Need to address this at decadal level.
      • SH: problem at science paper level?
        • AK: no, if the discussion is what science, not how to get it. If the discussion is how, then conflict is inevitable. For NASA to support a space mission, the case needs to be made to the decadal and priorities set there.

Other items for the near future

• Final imager configuration and sensitivity, final cryogenic assessment still pending
  • AT: Status. Thermal analysis wrapping up now. SPIE paper numbers likely final. Are there other noise/sensitivity issues outstanding? SH: no, just temperatures.
  • SH: Some temperatures have changed, so AT-SH will discuss details offline.
  • SH: FDM vs TDM noise ends up not making a difference. total noise difference is ~2%, which is beyond the accuracy we can expect from this study. Essentially no difference between TDM/FDM.
• Requirements vs best case estimates (started here, 5/09)
  • SH: Artificial to set a requirement. We're foreground limited, sims don't exist (yet) to say how well we can do. So r = 1×10^-4 requirement doesn't set a real noise goal until we have full sims.
  • SH: for other science goals, possible route to setting requirements,
    • Planck was within 20% of original design. We could degrade our numbers by ~20%. But this ignores the new set of issues with TES arrays (e.g. uniformity and yield).
    • Suggestion: reduce our numbers by a Planck factor (20%) and add a factor for yield/uniformity.
    • AT: requirements must be met for flight. If ground tests put you close then costs and work grow to ensure meeting requirements. Seen past missions where requirement is factor of 2 lower.
    • SH: add yield too, 20% degradation may be low.
    • AT: cost analysis assumed 90%, so reasonable place to start. (SH: 90% seems fine)
    • SH: So what is the additional degradation? How about sqrt(2)? AT: 1.5 or 1.6?
    • AK: lay out chain of logic. show where numbers are coming from. so assumptions
    • SH: This goes to costers and decadal. goals slightly different. For decadal we need to show high quality science. For costers need to ensure we're not making to aggressive assumptions which drive costs.
    • AT: 2 stories. Science objective is X, need Y sensitivity to reach that. Prediction is A, that is below Y by some margin which is enough for …

• TeamX slide review
  • AT: We have final slides. We have to sort out what is proprietary and release what is possible. That process is starting now.
    • SH: draft version still had 'risks' pages.
    • AT: Yes, these were comments for the team (Shaul, Amy, etc.). Those will be removed before forwarding to costers.
• Scheduling of final TeamX session (Funding at JPL runs out at the end of fiscal year).
  • SH: apparently additional teamX round. Scheduling and admin?
  • AT: will be fairly late. No TeamX changes allowed after this point. Won't look like other studies, no significant design work. Some small changes from Amy's response to March TeamX still need answers. Also can ask small questions relating to 50 page report. Main focus will be adjusting slides/story, not design changes.
  • SH: so gather in group sessions? or separate editing of slides.
  • AT: depends on what Al Nash chooses. but likely individuals working separately.
  • SH: funding status? Amy runs out? Al runs out? at fiscal year
  • AT: Al's current funding roles over, so no time limit on that work. Amy and team doesn't role over the same way, but Jeff has request funding for Sept-Nov. to extend work Amy and team can do.