Science objectives and the decadal surveys (2023 Appendix C)

Summary. Appendix C of NASA's 2023 Strategy and Objectives Development document traces 13 of the 26 science objectives to the documents NASA uses to set science priorities: the National Academies' decadal surveys and the Human Research Program's Integrated Research Plan. It covers the four Lunar and Planetary Science (LPS), four Heliophysics Science (HS), three Human and Biological Science (HBS) and two Physics and Physical Science (PPS) objectives. For each, it lists the decadal questions, goals or priority sections the objective answers, and the research the decadal recommends under them. This is the level below the objectives that the 2024 priority-science paper points to. ADD Rev C has no counterpart, and leaves the mapping of science payloads to the objectives for its next revision (below).

All page numbers on this page are PDF pages of Strategy and Objectives Development unless marked otherwise. Its printed page numbers are one lower. The goals and the full set of 63 objectives are on Objectives: the ten goals.

What Appendix C is

"NASA prioritizes science investigations based on recommendations laid out in community documents and/or internal roadmaps. The Science Mission Directorate (SMD) regularly engages with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to produce decadal research studies that are the basis for recommendations of top-priority science areas for NASA investments in the upcoming decade." The Human Research Program "maintains the Integrated Research Plan that describes the research and technology development activities required to mitigate risks to human space explorers. The science-focused Moon to Mars objectives trace back to these guiding documents as outlined in Table C.1 below" (Strategy and Objectives Development, PDF p. 47).

"Current guiding documents", as printed (PDF p. 47):

Discipline	Document
Planetary Science	Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032 (2022)
Heliophysics	Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society (2013) "(to be updated in 2023)"
Astrophysics	Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 2020s (2021)
Biological and Physical Sciences	Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration: Life and Physical Sciences Research for a New Era (2011) "(to be updated in 2023)"
Human Research	Integrated Research Plan (2022)

The sources don't say whether the two updates appeared.

How the table is laid out. Read from the PDF; the layout descriptions are the wiki's. No page carries a "Table C.1" caption. The table runs over PDF pp. 48–77 as two-page spreads, one colour per objective. The left page holds the objective and the decadal's questions or goals; the right page holds the research recommended under them, or other documents. The headings change by discipline:

Objectives	Column headings, as printed	PDF pages
LPS-1 to LPS-4	"2023 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Questions"; "2023 Decadal Strategic Questions"; "2023 Decadal Strategic Research"	48–69
HS-1 to HS-4	"Active Solar and Space Decadal Objectives"; "Active Solar and Physics Decadal Science Challenges"; "Other Relevant Documents"	70–73
HBS-1	"Active BioSciences Decadal Objectives (to be updated with upcoming decadal)"; a third column with no heading	74
HBS-2, HBS-3	"Human Research Program Roadmap Integrated Research Plan"	75
PPS-1, PPS-2	"Active Physical Sciences Decadal Objectives"; "Active Physical Sciences Decadal Science"; "Active Physical Sciences Decadal Strategic Investigations"	76–77

The research rows are shaded like rows on the facing page, but the table doesn't say which research item answers which question. The wiki lists research by objective only.

What it leaves out. There are no rows for the seven Science-Enabling (SE) or six Applied Science (AS) objectives. These are the other two of the six science goals, which hold "26 objectives" in all (PDF p. 46; Objectives). The appendix doesn't say why it leaves them out. Its own scope is "the science-focused Moon to Mars objectives".

The thirteen objectives and what they trace to

The objective wording is on Objectives and Lunar objectives. Appendix C prints two of the thirteen in different words (below). For the planetary objectives, the decadal's numbered questions are given with their sub-questions in brackets. They come from the text layer, where each page holds one objective; pp. 48, 50, 52, 62 and 64 were checked in the PDF. Codes such as SHP-3, SWMI-3 and AIMI-1 are printed without explanation, and the wiki doesn't expand them.

Objective	Guiding document, as the table names it	Questions, goals or sections it traces to	Other documents, research	PDF pp.
LPS-1 LM: solar system origin and early history	"2023 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal"	Q2 (2.4); Q3 (3.1–3.5); Q4 (4.1, 4.2, 4.4); Q5 (5.2, 5.3); Q6 (6.1); Q9 (9.1)	"2023 Decadal Strategic Research"	48–51
LPS-2 LM: geologic processes	as LPS-1	Q3 (3.3, 3.5, 3.6); Q4 (4.1–4.4); Q5 (5.1–5.6); Q6 (6.1–6.6); Q8 (8.1–8.3); Q10 (10.2, 10.4–10.7)	as LPS-1	52–61
LPS-3 LM: volatiles	as LPS-1	Q3 (3.3, 3.5, 3.6); Q4 (4.3); Q5 (5.3, 5.5); Q6 (6.1, 6.4); Q10 (10.2, 10.3)	as LPS-1	62–63
LPS-4 M: origin of life	as LPS-1	Q4 (4.3); Q9 (9.1); Q10 (10.1–10.7); Q11 (11.1–11.4)	as LPS-1	64–69
HS-1 LM: space weather	"Active Solar and Space Decadal"	"Key Science Goal 1. Determine the origins of the Sun's activity and predict the variations in the space environment."; SHP-3, SWMI-3, AIMI-1, AIMI-2, AIMI-3	seven, below	70–71
HS-2 LM: history of the Sun in the regolith	as HS-1	"Key Science Goal 4. Discover and characterize fundamental processes that occur both within the heliosphere and throughout the universe."; SHP-4, SWMI-4, AIMI-4	"2007 Heliophysics Science and the Moon (Section 3.0)"	70–71
HS-3 LM: plasma processes	as HS-1	Key Science Goal 4; SHP-2, SHP-3, SHP-4, SWMI-1 to SWMI-4, AIMI-1, AIMI-2	"2007 Heliophysics Science and the Moon (Section 1.0, 4.0)"; "2021 Plasma Science: Enabling Technology, Sustainability, Security, and Exploration"	70–73
HS-4 LM: magnetotail and solar wind	as HS-1	"Key Science Goal 2. Determine the dynamics and coupling of Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere, and atmosphere and their response to solar and terrestrial inputs."; SHP-3, SHP-4	"2007 Heliophysics Science and the Moon (Section 1.0)"	72–73
HBS-1 LM: how biology responds	The 2011 "BPS Decadal Survey" (Recapturing a Future for Space Exploration); its 2012 supplement, Research for the Future in Space: The Role of Life and Physical Sciences; and "Thriving in Deep Space (TIDES)"	The 2012 supplement's five "Investigation Priority Sections": "Issues with Bone Loss", "Nutrition and Space Foods", "Shifts in Astronaut Health during Long Periods in Space", "The Roles of Plants and Microbial Growth", "The Risk of Cellular and Genetic Changes in Long-Term Space Travel"	TIDES: two research questions (animals and model organisms; plants) and four topics: "Systems Biology", "Genetic Engineering Plants", "Plant Responses to Lunar Regolith and Simulants", "3D Tissue and Organ-on-Chip Models"	74
HBS-2 LM: Earth-independent crew health	"Human Research Program Roadmap Integrated Research Plan"	"Evaluate and validate progressively Earth-independent crew health & performance systems and operations." "Test crew health & performance with the hazard environments, mission durations, and systems representative of Mars-class missions."	link: humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov	75
HBS-3 LM: exploration systems and human health	as HBS-2	"Evaluate changes to the human system and validate countermeasures to mitigate impacts to overall crew health & performance with human subject research." "Evaluate the interaction of exploration habitation systems and spaceflight hazards and validate crew health & performance." "Evaluate and validate operational implementation of critical tasks and human factors for adequate crew health & performance."		75
PPS-1 L: far-side astrophysics	none named in the row	"Discovery Area: The Dark Ages as a Cosmological Probe"; "21 cm and molecular line intensity mapping of the Dark Ages and reionization era as both the discovery area for the next decade and as the likely future technique for measuring the initial conditions of the universe in the decades to follow"	the FARSIDE array; 21 cm interferometers (below)	76–77
PPS-2 LM: physical systems	The 2011 BPS decadal survey and its 2012 supplement	Six sections: "The Nature of Fluids", "Physics in Space", "Issues in Fire Behavior and Safety", "The Matter of Materials", "Exploring Space and Time", "Living Off the Land"	14 "Strategic Investigations" (below)	76–77

Notes on the table:

• The planetary questions' short titles, as printed: Q2 "Accretion in the Outer Solar System"; Q3 "Origin of Earth and inner solar system bodies"; Q4 "Impacts and dynamics"; Q5 "Solid body interiors and surfaces"; Q6 "Solid body atmospheres, exospheres, magnetospheres, and climate evolution"; Q8 "Circumplanetary systems"; Q9 "Insights from Terrestrial Life" (p. 64; untitled on p. 50); Q10 "Dynamic habitability"; Q11 "Search for life elsewhere" (pp. 48–68).
• "2023" and "2022". The planetary columns say "2023 … Decadal", and the guiding-documents list dates the survey 2022 with the span "2023-2032" (p. 47). The wiki reads both as the same survey.
• "BPS" isn't spelled out in the table. The guiding-documents list files the 2011 survey under "Biological and Physical Sciences" (p. 47), and the wiki reads BPS that way. HBS-1's row and PPS-2's row both say "most of the recommendations are applicable to and support the Decadal Report finding above" and quote it: "Achieving the goals of the Exploration Initiative will require a greater understanding of life and physical sciences phenomena in microgravity as well as in the partial gravity environments of the Moon and Mars" (pp. 74, 76).
• PPS-1 names no document. Its "Discovery Area" sits under the "Active Physical Sciences" headings. The astrophysics survey is on the guiding-documents list (p. 47), but the row doesn't cite it.

Heliophysics: other relevant documents

HS-1's list, as printed (p. 71): "2007 Heliophysics Science and the Moon (Section 2.0)"; "2019 National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan"; "2020 NASA Space Weather Strategy"; "2020 Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow (PROSWIFT) Act"; "2021 NASA Space Weather Science and Observation Gap Analysis"; "2021 National Academy: Planning the Future Space Weather Operations and Research Infrastructure"; "2022 National Academy: Space Weather Workshop Phase II

• TBA". None of these is among the wiki's sources.

Lunar research in the table

The research rows reprint the decadal's recommendations for each question across the whole solar system. Many name Mars, Venus, Mercury, Titan or the ocean worlds rather than the Moon (the wiki's reading). For LPS-1 to LPS-3 and HBS-1, the list below quotes rows that name the Moon. For PPS-1 and PPS-2 it gives the whole research column, most of which names no destination:

• LPS-1 LM (pp. 49, 51):
  • "Determine the age relations between the oldest lunar crustal and mantle rocks by dating lunar crustal and mantle rocks, which may be potentially found at the South-Pole Aitken basin."
  • "Determine the nature of impactors striking the most ancient regions of the Moon in order to constrain early bombardment populations by returning samples of soils/breccias from lunar farside regions where ancient materials have been recently excavated by impacts."
  • "Determine the age of the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin to determine the beginning of recorded bombardment on the ancient lunar far side by dating samples formed from or excavated by the SPA basin forming event."
• LPS-2 LM (pp. 53, 55, 59):
  • "Determine the internal structure of the Moon with sufficient resolution to constrain its bulk composition and initial thermal state using geophysical measurements obtained from spacecraft and/or a seismic network and other in-situ analyses."
  • "Probe the internal structures of the Moon, Mars, and Mercury by establishing a geophysical (seismic/magnetometer) network on the former two bodies and making the first surface seismic/magnetometer measurements on the latter."
  • "Determine the present-day lunar impact rate and better understand the nature of impact mechanics by coupling seismic monitoring to lunar observations of impact flashes and fresh impact craters."
  • "Assess processes producing lunar regolith heterogeneity by measuring the thickness variations, and vertical and lateral compositional variability of the lunar regolith, using geophysical profiling, high-resolution multi-spectral imaging, and petrologic analyses of in-situ or returned samples."
  • "Determine the size and state of the Moon's solid inner core through seismology measurements, electromagnetic sounding, and other geophysical investigations"
• LPS-3 LM (p. 63):
  • "Determine the origin of polar volatiles by obtaining and analyzing the properties of ices found within the permanently shadowed craters located near the lunar and Mercurian poles."
  • "Determine the origin, time of delivery, vertical and lateral distribution and current cycling of cold-trapped lunar volatiles via in-situ analyses of isotopes (e.g., Deuterium/Hydrogen), sulfur, organics, abundance and distribution of volatiles, and local exospheric measurements."
  • "Determine the amount and origin of water ice on the Moon and Mercury by sampling ice, determining its spatial distribution, measuring H and O isotopes, and determining the nature and abundance of contaminants within the ice as a means of understanding sources of water in the inner solar system."
• PPS-1 L (p. 77): "The FARSIDE array is listed as a candidate Probe-class mission also in the Decadal Survey. Science: z > 10 neutral hydrogen and SETI search on lunar far side; exoplanets; heliophysics". FARSIDE isn't spelled out. The second row: "21 cm interferometers: (C-2a) Dark sector small-scale structure; (C-3b) support modeling of CMB optical depth; (CDA1) unusual IGM temperature histories; (CDA2) primordial density mapping; Long-term, map at z > 50; decadalscale, map at reionization epoch and lower redshifts".
• PPS-2 LM (p. 77), the 14 strategic investigations, as printed: "Recycling Air and Water in Spacecraft"; "Understanding altered granular physics and fluid-like behaviors"; "Fluid Physics - small forces"; "Cryogenic rocket fuels"; "Planetary water retrieval and processing"; "Granular physics and physical properties"; "Combustion and Fire Behavior"; "Prevention, Detection, Suppression"; "Material's microstructure and quality"; "Relationship between a material's properties and structure"; "Cold Atoms, atomic clocks"; "Complex fluid and soft matter"; "Harnessing Non-Terrestrial Resources for Exploration Technologies"; "Space Construction with Earth-Tested Methods".
• HBS-1 LM (p. 74): "Plant Responses to Lunar Regolith and Simulants".

Set beside the architecture (the wiki's pairing). The 2024 priority-science paper names three "architecture-dependent" lunar science challenges: South Pole-Aitken basin sample return, a lunar geophysical network, and cryogenic volatile sample return. It ties the first two to LPS-1 and LPS-2 and the third to LPS-3 (Utilization Systems). Appendix C has research rows on the same subjects under the same objectives: SPA dating and samples under LPS-1, the seismic and magnetometer network under LPS-2, and polar and cold-trapped volatiles under LPS-3. The 2024 paper points to the appendix as a whole, not to these rows.

The objective wording in Appendix C

Appendix C prints the objectives in a third version. It differs both from the 2022 wording and from the 2023 document's own Section 5. PDF checked on pp. 48, 52, 62, 64, 70, 72 and 74–76:

• HS-3: "using the cislunar, near-Martian, and near-surface environments as laboratories" (pp. 70, 72). The 2022 document and Section 5 (PDF p. 21) have "cislunar, near-Mars, and surface environments".
• PPS-1: "investigations of deep space and deep time" (p. 76). The 2022 document and Section 5 (PDF p. 23) have "investigations of space and time".
• LPS-2 and HBS-2 follow the 2022 wording ("that affect planetary bodies by determining the interior structures"; "crew health & performance"), not Section 5's edits (Objectives).
• Small differences: "Solar System" is capitalized in LPS-1, LPS-3, LPS-4 and HS-2, where 2022 has lower case. HBS-1 has no final period.

The December 2025 lunar decomposition prints the 2022 wording for HS-3 and PPS-1 ("near-Mars, and surface"; "space and time"; sheet "FE+ Use Cases to Objectives", rows HS-03 LM and PPS-01 L; source page). The wiki keeps the 2022 wording as current (open question 50).

What changed by Rev C

The wiki's comparison:

• No counterpart in Rev C. ADD Rev C doesn't reprint or cite the mapping. A search of its text for "decadal" finds only the 2023 planetary decadal, which it cites in RT-6 for "ethical and societal questions" (ADD Rev C, p. 98; RT-6).
• Mapping science to the architecture is still forward work. "NASA will formalize how science payloads map to Moon to Mars science objectives and point to reference locations as part of the next revision" (ADD Rev C, p. 69).
• The objectives themselves are still current. All 13 are in the 2022 set that Rev C cites. Twelve of them, all but the Mars-only LPS-4 M, are in the December 2025 lunar decomposition (Lunar objectives).
• The 2024 papers. The priority-science paper points to this appendix (its "p. 46", printed page 46, PDF p. 47): "each science objective may be further decomposed down to strategic research topics and specific investigations" (Priority Science Objectives, p. 2). The humans-in-space paper says NASA adopted the planetary decadal's three themes "as the basis for the first three Lunar and Planetary Science Objectives" (Humans in Space, p. 3). Appendix C maps each of the three to several of the decadal's numbered questions instead. The two don't conflict.

In the February 2024 workshop briefing

SMD's part of the February 2024 Mission Directorate Panel, between the 2023 document and the 2024 papers, shows the theme-level link as a "1:1 Trace of Lunar Themes from Planetary Decadal to M2M Objectives": the planetary decadal's "BOX 22.2 Science Themes for Lunar Exploration", Theme 1 "Uncover the lunar record of solar system origin and early history" → LPS-1, Theme 2 "Understand the geologic processes that shaped the early Earth that are best preserved on the Moon" → LPS-2, Theme 3 "Reveal inner solar system volatile origin and delivery processes" → LPS-3, with the objectives in the 2022 wording (Mission Directorate Panel, slide 8). The slide before it sets the five decadal surveys beside four lunar reports and five "Upcoming Academy / SDT Studies That Will Inform Architecture" (slide 7). Its trace is one theme to one objective, the humans-in-space paper's reading; Appendix C's is objective to numbered questions (the wiki's comparison).

Moon Base relevance

Not established by the sources so far. Appendix C predates the Moon Base (announced March 2026) and doesn't mention it.

Related pages

Objectives: the ten goals · Lunar objectives · Utilization Systems · Why Moon to Mars · Objective decomposition · Strategy and Objectives Development (2023) · Priority Science Objectives (2024)

Sources

Strategy and Objectives Development (2023), PDF pp. 21, 23, 46–77 · Moon to Mars Objectives (2022), pp. 6–7 · ADD Rev C, pp. 69, 98 · Lunar objective decomposition spreadsheet, "FE+ Use Cases to Objectives" · Priority Science Objectives (ACR24), p. 2 · Humans in Space (ACR24), p. 3