  The commercial SmallSat industry is booming and has developed numerous
low-cost, capable satellite buses. SmallSats can be used as vehicles for
technology development or to host science missions. Missions hosted on
SmallSats can answer specific science questions that are difficult or
impossible to answer with larger facilities, can be developed relatively
quickly, serve to train engineering and scientists, and provide access to space
for small institutions. SmallSats complement larger Astrophysics missions and
allow the broader community to test new ideas at the bottom of the market,
creating new capabilities which find their way to larger missions. Currently,
NASA Astrophysics does not provide flight opportunities that would allow
technology maturation of instrument systems or concepts of operations. Without
flight opportunities to mature technologies, missions hosted on SmallSats are
likely to be considered high risk, and face long odds being selected for
implementation. Our primary suggestion is that NASA decouples science and
technology for SmallSats by creating a technology-based SmallSat AO, modeled
after the Earth Sciences InVEST call. Such AO would help reduce the new
technology risk for science missions of any size. We also suggest that NASA
provides additional science-driven SmallSat opportunities at the ~$12M funding
level, provides access to new launchers free of charge to proposers, and
re-structures the solicitation AOs so that SmallSats do not compete with other
mission classes such as balloons.
