14th SBAG meeting update

I just wanted to post a short update in regards to the SBAG meeting last week. The videos have all been linked in the meeting agenda. I know I'm not the only person that asked for these videos but I mark this as a great win for access to space sciences. Thank you SBAG members for your hard work.

14th Small Bodies Assessment Group Meeting 

I have lower hopes for this weeks OPAG meeting but at worst, I'm looking at possible options to record these meetings and provide them to the public. I'll update in regards to this in the future.

14th SBAG: Day 3

The 14th SBAG meeting continues on day 3 today.

Agenda (pdf)

Live video feed

Of most interest to me is the presentation from the Dawn mission at the start of the meeting today (currently ongoing). Following this presentation is an update to the James Webb Space Telescope construction, which just this morning, finished installing the final mirror on the monolithic assembly.  Later this morning is several presentations on small satellite concepts and the meeting will wrap up at noon-time PST. 

I received further comment from an SBAG committee member in regards to accessing the recorded presentations. The request was forwarded on to the NASA public affairs office which should provide an answer to whether these videos can be distributed.

UPDATE

Dawn presentation

I unfortunately did not get to see the entire presentation this morning. I am very hopeful that it will be possible to get a link to the recording for later viewing. For the portion of the presentation that I did see, there was a plentiful amount of new information with a lot of really great slides as well. Those slides aren't yet posted but I was told they should be up by the end of the day. Watch for another update here for that. One slide I screencapped was a previously unreleased LAMO image of a portion of Haulani. Its low in resolution from the video feed, but I can imagine it is much better in appearance in the PDF slide presentation. And once again, if I receive a link for the recorded presentation, you can expect it to be in an update here as well.

Haulani crater on Ceres from the Dawn mission in LAMO

SBAG 14: Day 2

The Small Bodies Assessment Group meeting continues today.

Agenda (pdf)

Live video feed

Yesterday's presentations about New Horizons by Alan Stern can be watched here.

Several interesting presentations should happen today. A presentation from the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) team, Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment by Andy Rivkin, and current Phase A Discovery class missions to small bodies where we will hopefully get more details about them.

I will attempt to track down all of yesterday's talks and all future talks from the meeting and post them here in an easy to locate place. It was suggested that there will be a location on the SBAG website with links to them, but I haven't yet seen anything from this meeting or previous meetings that would facilitate this.

Update: I've been in contact with SBAG in regards to the recorded video material. Apparently there is no intention to provide links to this video content. I have an email out to several committee members in regards to this as well. I'm unsure if there are restrictions to the presentations that would prevent the videos from being distributed, but I suspect that there just isn't any plan to provide access. The New Horizons presentation link was provided in error yesterday. However, I will leave the link live for as long as it works.

Requiring people to watch these meetings live to gain access to the discussed information is rather unfortunate in my opinion. Most people have jobs that would essentially prevent access the information entirely, aside from the provided PDF slide presentations, which may or may not include descriptive text for each panel. I am absolutely sure there are many people out there that have an interest in the information being discussed at the SBAG meeting but are unable to attend or watch due to schedule conflicts. By denying access to the video content, I feel that its just another closed door in the face of an interested public. Outreach is imperative to maintain an interested public and all they need to do for outreach, is to provide content to keep the public interested and wanting more. /endrant

Going On Now: New Horizons Talk @ SBAG16

Rather short notice here, but in about half an hour, there will be a presentation from Alan Stern about New Horizons at the Small Bodies Assessment Group 2016 meeting.

Agenda (pdf)

New Horizons Slide Presentation

Live Event Feed