Earth venture mission 2 announcement of opportunity

On or about September 3, 2015, NASAs Science Mission Directorate (SMD) will release an Announcement of Opportunity (AO) to solicit Principal Investigator (PI)-led space-based science investigations for the Earth Venture Mission - 2 (EVM-2) element of the Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) Program. All related information and links to the full text of the solicitation will be available at the NSPIRES Website (http://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/ ) and at the EVM-2 Acquisition Homepage (http://essp.larc.nasa.gov/EVM-2/ ).

The Earth Venture element of the ESSP Program conducts Principal Investigator (PI)-led science investigations relevant to SMD's Earth Science research program. Earth Venture investigations must address NASA's goals to acquire deeper scientific understanding of the components of the Earth system, their interactions, and the consequences to life of changes in the Earth system. All investigations proposed in response to this solicitation must be implemented through the provision of a complete spaceflight mission. The term "complete" encompasses all appropriate mission phases from project initiation (Phase A) through mission operations (Phase E) and closeout (Phase F), which must include analysis and publication of data in the peer reviewed scientific literature and delivery of the data to an appropriate NASA data archive. The term "spaceflight missions" for this EVM-2 AO is defined as Earth orbital and deep-space missions in a dedicated spacecraft or as a hosted payload; it specifically excludes International Space Station payloads and suborbital missions, such as those flown via sounding rockets, balloons, and aircraft. These spaceflight missions will be used to conduct innovative, integrated, hypothesis, or scientific question-driven investigations addressing pressing Earth system science issues.

Participation is open to all categories of organizations or institutions, U.S. or non-U.S., including educational, industrial, and not-for-profit institutions, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), NASA Centers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and other Government agencies.

Any costs incurred by prospective investigators in preparing submissions in response to this solicitation are incurred completely at the submitter's own risk.

Questions and comments may be addressed by E-mail to the EVM-2 Program Scientist: Ramesh Kakar at ramesh.k.kakar@nasa.gov (subject line to read "EVM-2").

The key dates for this AO are:

AO Release Date...................................... September 3, 2015 Preproposal Conference.............................September 17, 2015 Notice of Intent to Propose Deadline............October 2, 2015 Electronic Proposal Submittal Deadline at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time.........................December 4, 2015 Letters of Commitment Due (with Proposal)......December 4, 2015 Deadline for Receipt of Proposal on CD-ROMs 5:00 P.M. Eastern Time.............................December 11, 2015 Selections Announced (target)....................August, 2016 Initiate Investigation (target)................NLT January 17, 2016 Launch Readiness Date. NLT June 30, 2022, or five years after the contract is in place, whichever is earliest.