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HEASARC News New HEASARC Director/Meeting reminders



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NASA/GSFC HEASARC
24 Jun 2008

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Contents:

1) New HEASARC Director Announced
2) Meeting reminder: Constellation-X FST Meeting
3) Meeting announcement: Exploring the Hot Universe with XEUS

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1) New HEASARC Director Announced

Dr. Alan Smale has been appointed the new Director of the HEASARC and will 
take up the position on August 4.

Alan currently serves as Program Executive for Mission Operations and Data 
Analysis (MO&DA) in the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, where 
he is responsible for managing the MO&DA for the Chandra, GALEX, Gravity 
Probe-B, INTEGRAL, RXTE, Spitzer, Suzaku, Swift, WMAP, and XMM-Newton 
missions. He has also served as Program Scientist for RXTE, and Program 
Executive for the astrophysics data archives, including HEASARC, MAST, and 
IRSA.

Prior to his 5 years at NASA HQ, Alan worked as a Senior Research  
Scientist for USRA at Goddard, managing the RXTE Guest Observer Facility  
from 1994-2003, as well as the Swift Science Center from 1998-2003. He was 
also a Co-Investigator on the Swift mission. At the RXTE GOF he supported 
the community through the design and testing of data analysis software, 
data archiving, and the organization of Peer Reviews. Alan received his 
D.Phil in Astrophysics from the University of Oxford in 1986 and was a 
postdoctoral research associate at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, 
University College London.

We welcome Alan back to Goddard and the HEASARC!

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2) Meeting reminder: Constellation-X FST Meeting 

Everyone is invited to a meeting later this summer discussing the current 
status and future plans for NASA's Constellation-X X-ray observatory. This 
meeting will be held on August 20-22 2008 at NASA Goddard Space Flight 
Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. BADGES ARE REQUIRED FOR ENTRY (so you must 
register). We anticipate starting at about 10AM on August 20th and ending 
by about 4PM on Friday, August 22nd.

This meeting will feature presentations by the 14 Constellation-X science 
panel chairs (or their designates) plus updates from the Project office, 
the technology teams (mirror, calorimeter, gratings, hard X-ray  
telescope), and updates on our studies of the background, angular  
resolution and Target of Opportunity capabilities for the mission.
It is *very* important that you send an email to Sandy Barnes  
(Sandra.L.Barnes@nasa.gov) to register for this meeting so that we can  
ensure that a badge will be ready for you. Foreign nationals must register 
a *minimum* of 30 days ahead of time (by ~July 18th).

Further details can be found at  
http://constellation.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/2008/Aug_fst_invite.html

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3) Meeting announcement: Exploring the Hot Universe with XEUS

This meeting (for which registration is now open) will be held on 17-19  
September 2008 at MPE, Garching, Germany. XEUS, the next generation X-ray 
observatory, has been selected as a candidate Large-class mission as part 
of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme. Active study of the XEUS 
concept by ESA and JAXA is now underway in preparation for the Cosmic 
Vision downselection, expected at the end of 2009. The purpose of this 
workshop is to gather together members of the astronomical community with 
an interest in XEUS, to discuss the science we expect to be enabled by the 
mission.  Thus, a major component of the workshop will be devoted to 
identifying new science goals and drivers.

As well as summarising the current status of the project, topics to be  
covered include:

- Evolution of black hole accretion and its relationship to galaxy formation
- Growth and evolution of large scale structure
- Matter under extreme physical conditions around black holes and neutron 
stars
- Dynamics and chemistry of cosmic plasmas

Further details can be found at  
http://www.mpe.mpg.de/xeus/workshop_mpe_2008.html
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