RAPID: The Long-Term Effects of Covid-19: Decisions, Discovery, and Impact in the Space Sciences

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What will happen to science in the wake of COVID-19? Between present work disruptions and a forthcoming recession, we expect significant challenges for federally-funded science. COVID-19 catches scientists in a double bind of both strained budgets and social distancing in the laboratory that make sustaining research programs much more complicated than before. The virus’ varied impact in different states also complicates researcher’s collaborations across different institutions. The tough decisions that scientists make now to navigate the current crisis will have an impact on the coming generation of scientists’ careers, research, and experiments. To examine COVID-19’s emerging impacts on science, we look to a case of federally-funded big science disrupted by the current crisis: planetary and space sciences. These scientists and engineers collaborate on long-term projects that build and command spacecraft that explore the solar system. Through online participation and interviews, we will analyze how planetary scientists build the tools and maintain the relationships they need to get the job done, while largely confined to their homes. Building upon previous NSF-supported research, we will develop a repertoire for action, indicating what scientific communities can do to weather the storm, keep lines of discovery open, maintain investments in diversity and in infrastructure, and organize successful lobbying efforts. In this way we can help to ensure the broadest possible outcomes and benefits from public investment in science during the crisis. This project examines how the relational work of infrastructuring science hold up under extreme economic crisis, and social distancing. The research will examine how researchers plan for the future in uncertain times, how computer-mediated communication impacts decision-making, and how economic and social crises impact diversity initiatives in the sciences. Responses to financial crises shape the social and intellectual organization of science at the level of everyday practice and over the long durée. Further, moments of crisis help surface the often-invisible social relations that scientists depend upon to get the job done. The present COVID-19 crisis, however, makes past periods of uncertainty appear trivial in scale and scope. This project undertakes a rapid-response one-year observational period among the planetary science community, seizing the opportunity to follow a scientific community in depth at its time of greatest potential transformation during a period that promises long-term consequences of decades or more. This federally-funded science is experiencing considerable effects of the crisis, with laboratories are shut down or open under social distancing guidelines, expanding the timeline and expense associated with project delivery, and disruption to established patterns of collaboration. Further, planetary scientists will produce their decadal survey this year: a community engagement study conducted once every ten years to determine the coming decade’s priorities for spacecraft development and scientific investment. As a result, decisions with lasting import will be made in ephemeral, fleeting video-conferenced meetings and text messages, available for a digital ethnographer to attend on the spot but impossible to retrieve after the fact. Using virtual ethnography and online interviews this project will follow three future missions -- the developing Europa Clipper, a proposed mission to Neptune, and an Interstellar Probe – and this year's planned Decadal Survey. The project will also examine the social media conversations that now constitute frontstage chatter among scientists. Examining these ephemeral and undocumented critical interactions will allow the researchers to document a crucial year in the history of the field and to develop novel insights into the relationship between governance and scientific outcomes, discovery, and impact. They will also develop a science funding continuity toolkit for publicly-funded scientists to take action, indicating what scientific communities can do to weather the storm, keep lines of discovery open, maintain workforce diversity, and maximize scientific impact in unprecedented times.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.