Though the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) was conceived as a 10-year effort, a midterm external review of the collaborative’s achievements suggested that the DCO leadership explore the possibilities for continuing the collaboration after Sloan Foundation funding lapses in 2019. This grant supports the creation of a special task force to explore such options. Led by French geologist Claud Jaupert, the task force will outline practical requirements and consequences of post?2019 options for the Deep Carbon Observatory, exploring the ways in which the DCO might be continued, expanded, or wound down. It will scan the intellectual horizon for new research ventures; outline international cooperative programs that could build on the DCO community and expand its scientific reach; identify researchers and academic institutions that might participate in post?2019 activities; and search for institutions, funding bodies, and foundations that could provide financial support for post?2019 activities. It would carry out these activities through commissioned papers, visits with key stakeholders and institutions, and a trio of workshops, including special focus on the (now) younger scientists who will be in the prime of their careers during the decade of the 2020s. The effort represents a reasoned, prudent way to evaluate what to do, if anything, with the databases, websites, instruments, models, monitoring networks, and human capital created by the DCO’s first decade of discovery.