I could tell when they cancelled the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference that COVID-19 would be making a different kind of impact on life than other epidemiologic events I've seen in the news over the years. That canary was scheduled for March 16th in the coal mine of 2020. The cancellation of other planetary science conferences followed, including the massive meeting of the American Astronomical Society scheduled for May 31st. I wasn't registered for either of those conferences and for a moment I thought I might escape missing a conference. But things progressed as they have and on March 6th I registered for a conference on ultraviolet observing; it was scheduled for May 4th. Even as I hit submit on my abstract, my advisor and I were skeptical about the prospects of the conference happening. Indeed, it was cancelled. Major changes to large, annual events like these helped give scientists an early, up-close preview of the scope of how the coronavirus would impact our lives.
A friend of mine works for one of the NASA centers described to me over the phone how they were handling things. Early on in the outbreak, NASA developed a response framework, creating 4 stages of response to guide centers in various levels of shutdown and eventual reopening; all employees were apprised of this framework. It’s the type of thing you’d expect from NASA – formal, organized, codified, advanced planning. This exists in stark contrast to the national discourse on COVID-19 planning, acceptable levels of risk, and for reopening. Those who work for NASA, in addition to being more likely to trust epidemiologists and the CDC, were treated to a level of organization and communication that the American people might have enjoyed from another administration. Having some idea of what is coming next allows people to plan for the future; it’s not rocket science.
With that being said, Americans have made due in various ways with what was never going to be a pleasant situation, regardless of administration. Some conferences scheduled for this spring have successfully gone online. The 48th annual University of Arizona Geosciences Symposium (GeoDaze) was held entirely virtual for the first time on April 23rd and 24th. Speakers prerecorded and uploaded their talks and gave a live Q&A on the final day. With the audience having more opportunity to consider their questions and look things up. A friend of mine participated and I asked them about that. They said that they got good questions. My inquiry suffers from a small sample size.
I heard about the 2020 Space Science in Context virtual conference on May 14th as its hashtag, #SSiC2020, trended on Twitter. Before COVID-19 crept like a dark fog over all our plans, this conference was specifically designed to be given in an online-only format. This was done in an effort to mitigate the impact to the climate (which is considerable for conferences where hundreds or thousands of scientists fly in, sometimes across oceans and continents), to be more accessible to people who are disabled/differently abled (issues of mobility, acoustics, etc. can be significant) and to be more financially inclusive (costs were kept down by keeping the conference virtual and conference registration was free).
I personally helped run our department’s ongoing Graduate Student Colloquium series this semester. There was some uncertainty about taking this to Zoom, but the few sessions we had were successful. We don’t keep statistics on attendance, but our virtual sessions had about as many, if not more, people than usual. While I don’t envy our first-year graduate students who broke in this new format for us, I see how it might have had some advantages. I personally find a screen full of colleagues and professors a little less intimidating than a roomful, but maybe that’s just me (it’s a lot easier to close a browser window than to run out of a room screaming). Speaker notes are a little more accessible in this format too. There were some pluses for the attendees as well. While they were deprived of the coffee and snacks normally provided by the department, they were treated to snacks of their own choosing and allowed greater leeway in their professionally acceptable attire.
Despite the hits we’ve taken to our normally-scheduled activities during this pandemic, I’m glad to be a space scientist right now. Many of us are able to work remotely (pour one out for those whose lab work or telescope observing has been interrupted), we are in a community with a more workable conversation around the coronavirus and we are adapting in various ways. Harsher repercussions of the pandemic may be on the horizon for space scientists (professors and staff are already being furloughed and being given pay cuts, the impact to the economy doesn't bode well for grant proposals, some of which already have a success rate in the few percents). We will see how bad it gets time goes on and what it will take to escape the coal mine.
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