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Societal Challenge U.S. coastal communities, economies, and ecosystems, as well as the natural and built infrastructure on which they depend, are increasingly impacted by accelerating changes at the coast. Creating resilience to these changes requires risk-informed decision making and adaptation via enhanced emergency response, coastal data collection, and predictive capabilities. A resilient coas ...

Societal Challenge Ocean warming, decreasing sea ice, changing currents, rising seas, ocean acidification, and deoxygenation are affecting the nation’s valuable living marine resources and many ocean-dependent businesses and communities. These changes impact the nation’s security through many sectors from marine navigation, transportation, and energy, to fisheries, aquaculture, and protected r ...

Societal Challenge The U.S. is facing emerging threats to our economic and national security and ecosystem and habitat health from competing demands for our increasingly limited and stressed water supply and other water risks nationwide, in the context of aging water infrastructure, degrading water quality, population growth, and climate change. Overview Water is essential for life and is inexorab ...

Societal Challenge The effects of space weather pose significant and increasing societal, economic, national security, and health risks to the United States and nations worldwide. These include risks to the electric power grid; aviation operations; positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services; satellites and communications; human space exploration; and other space-based assets. Overview Spac ...

Societal Challenge Worldwide, there is now widespread recognition of the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the climate system, leading to dangerous, accelerated warming. Within the U.S. and internationally, there is a growingdemand for information about current and future greenhouse gas emissions, their impact on the state of the global climate system, and options and effectiveness of climate ...

The exploration of space requires advanced technologies that will better enable both humans and robotic spacecraft to maintain a sustained lunar presence, support Mars exploration, operate in deep space, and explore other destinations in our solar system. Examples of such missions include robotic platforms like the Europa Lander or crewed missions with extended periods of dormancy such as Gateway. ...

This focus area includes the development of robotic systems and technologies (hardware and software) that will enable and enhance future space exploration, science, and service missions. In the coming decades, robotic systems will continue to change the way space is explored. Robots will be used in all mission phases: as independent explorers operating in environments too distant or hostile for ...

NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD), https://science.nasa.gov. encompasses research in the areas of Astrophysics, Earth Science, Heliophysics, Planetary Science, and Biological/Physical Sciences. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have provided NASA with recently updated Decadal surveys that are useful to identify technologies that are of interest to the above scien ...

In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) involves any hardware or operation that harnesses and utilizes ‘in-situ’ resources (natural and discarded) to create products and services for robotic and human exploration. Local resources include ‘natural’ resources found on extraterrestrial bodies such as water, solar wind-implanted volatiles (hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, etc.), vast quantities ...

NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD), https://science.nasa.gov/ encompasses research in the areas of Astrophysics, Earth Science, Heliophysics, and Planetary Science. The National Academies of Science has provided NASA with recently updated Decadal surveys that are useful to identify technologies that are of interest to the above science divisions. Those documents are available at https://www. ...