Funding Opportunities and Announcements

Funding Opportunities

BepiColombo Mission Guest Investigators

Mandatory Letters of Intent are due to ESA by 12:00 pm CEST on May 20, 2025.
Emails requesting a NASA letter of endorsement must be received by NASA no later than May 30, 2025.
Full proposals are due to ESA by 12:00 pm CEST on June 10, 2025.

The Opportunity for an Interdisciplinary Scientist and Guest Investigators in the BepiColombo Mission was released by ESA on April 22, 2025, soliciting proposals from scientists to augment the scientific return of BepiColombo, see https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/bepicolombo-ids-gi-2025.

Up to 11 Guest Investigators (GIs) will be appointed through this opportunity. The GI call is open to scientists based in ESA Member States (up to five), Japan (up to one), and the U.S. (up to five).

NASA POC

           Shoshana Weider

           Program Scientist

           Planetary Science Division (Science Mission Directorate)

           NASA Headquarters

                      email: shoshana.z.weider@nasa.gov

ROSES-2024

• The 2024 version of Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES-2024) was posted at https://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2024 on February 14, 2024.
• Table 2 with all program elements organized by due date was posted at https://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2024table2
• Table 3 with all program elements organized by subject matter was posted at https://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2024table3
• The FAQ on what's new in ROSES-2024 was posted at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/faqs/#faq-1
• We have a few ways for proposers to keep up to date with changes to ROSES after release. You are encouraged to:
  • Subscribe to the SMD NSPIRES mailing lists (by logging in at https://nspires.nasaprs.com and checking the appropriate boxes under Account Management and Email Subscriptions),
  • Bookmark the ROSES-2024 blog for clarifications, corrections and amendments at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/solicitations/roses-2024/ and
  • Subscribe to the relevant ROSES-2024 due date Google calendars. Instructions will be posted at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/library-and-useful-links on or about February 14, 2024.

Future Solicitations

You may download the current planning list of SMD Solicitations (NRAs and AOs) as a PDF from the SOMA web page. ROSES is released each year on or about February 14^th. Planned program elements of ROSES are listed in the ROSES tables of due dates as 'TBD' and hypertext links from each title in the table of due dates connects to the NSPIRES page for that program element with a summary and point of contact.

Astrophysics Small Explorer AO 2025 Update

A draft 2025 Astrophysics Small Explorer (SMEX) Announcement of Opportunity (AO) was published January 2025 as NNH25ZDA008J see https://go.nasa.gov/NNH25ZDA008J.

Originally, the final SMEX to have been released  in April 2025. However, the Astrophysics Division is taking additional time to refine its approach to the SMEX call to more effectively and efficiently provide meaningful proposal opportunities for the astrophysics community. NASA has determined that the next opportunity to propose for an Astrophysics Small Explorer (SMEX) mission will be postponed until no earlier than April 2026. 

Inquiries should be addressed via email to Doris Daou, APD SMEX Program Scientist at Doris.Daou@nasa.gov and E. Lucien Cox APD SMEX Program Executive at Elbert.l.Cox@nasa.gov. Responses may be given by email or posted in the Questions and  Answers (Q&A) section on the SMEX Program Acquisition website at https://explorers.larc.nasa.gov/APSMEX25/SMEX/

New Frontiers 5 AO Update

NASA received comments on the draft New Frontiers 5 Announcement of Opportunity in 2023. The current estimated release of final AO is no earlier than 2026. Comments provided in response to that draft will feed into development of the AO targeted for release no earlier than 2026. To assist proposers, NASA plans to share the major policies for the next AO approximately 18 months before the targeted release of the AO.

Further information will be posted when it is available on the New Frontiers Program Acquisition Website hosted by the Science Office for Mission Assessments (SOMA) at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) at https://newfrontiers.larc.nasa.gov/NF5/

Community Announcements

Information on Future Portal for Archiving NASA-funded Accepted Manuscripts

The NASA Scientific and Technical Information (STI) Program is developing an external submission portal for NASA-funded investigators to submit Accepted Manuscripts and other STI products. The portal is expected to be available later this summer.

The external portal will be used in place of the National Institutes of Health Manuscripts System (NIHMS), for grant and cooperative agreement recipients. The external portal will provide a more direct and streamlined Accepted Manuscript submission process for recipients. The STI Program will send communications prior to the start date with instructions and reminders.

As part of this transition, an information page about the new portal is available on the STI Program website which will be updated throughout the process: https://sti.nasa.gov/new-external-submission-portal/.

The STI Program invites comments and questions about this new external manuscript submission portal via the Research Access Help Desk at https://sti.nasa.gov/sti-contact-form/?RequestType=ResearchAccess.

Dual-Anonymous Peer Review

In our "ROSES" research solicitation we have expanded the use of dual-anonymous peer review in which, not only are proposers not told the identity their reviewers, the reviewers are not told the identity of the proposers (until after they have evaluated the scientific merit of all of the anonymized proposals). To learn more about dual-anonymous peer review see https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/dual-anonymous-peer-review.

No Due Dates?

In our "ROSES" research solicitation we have expanded the number of programs with no fixed due date. To these no due date programs (including seven in planetary science), proposals may be submitted at any time without any preliminary statement such as a Notice of Intent or Step-1 proposal. For more information see https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/NoDD.

Need Advice about ROSES and proposal writing?

On the library and useful links page we have resources that may be useful to those who are new to proposing to ROSES: Links to YouTube versions of presentations given at Goddard in February 2022 at https://youtu.be/62QqJ2Nnlzc and older by Max Bernstein (NASA HQ) and Christina Richey (JPL) about proposal writing. Both the video of Dr. Richey (thanks to the SETI Institute) and the video of Max Bernstein (thanks to NASA Ames Research Center). Other information that maybe useful to early career/ potential new PIs may be found at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/new-pi-resources.