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ROSES-25 Amendment 5: D.3 NICER Science Operations Suspended

4 August 2025

The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), a Principal Investigator (PI)-led NASA Mission of Opportunity in the Astrophysics Explorers Program, is an X-ray experiment on the International Space Station dedicated to high-resolution timing and spectroscopy of rapidly variable X-ray sources in the 0.2–12 keV band. In Cycle 8, NICER General Observer (GO) proposals were solicited for observations with NICER addressing all areas of astrophysics.

On June 17, 2025, NICER science operations were suspended due to a hardware anomaly in the pointing system. The rich trove of data collected by NICER during its 8 years of operations offers the potential for many fruitful science investigations.

ROSES-2025 Amendment 5 announces that science operations have been suspended but that data analysis proposals are being solicited. See Section 6 of D.3 Combined General Investigator General Observer Program (.pdf) on the NSPIRES page for IXPE, NICER, and Swift General Observer.

On or about July 30 2025, this Amendment to the NASA Research Announcement "Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) 2025" (NNH25ZDA001N) will be posted on the NASA research opportunity homepage and will appear on SARA's ROSES blog.

Programmatic questions concerning NICER may be directed to Roopesh Ojha at roopesh.ojha@nasa.gov. Technical questions concerning this program may be directed to Keith Gendreau at Keith.C.Gendreau@nasa.gov.

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An illustration of Sun-like star HD 181327 and its surrounding debris disk. The star is at top right. It is surrounded by a far larger debris disk that forms an incomplete ellpitical path and is cut off at right. There’s a huge cavity between the star and the disk. The debris disk is shown in shades of light gray. Toward the top and left, there are finer, more discrete points in a range of sizes. The disk appears hazier and smokier at the bottom. The star is bright white at center, with a hazy blue region around it. The background of space is black. The label Artist's Concept appears at lower left.