NASA SMD ROSES-15 Amendment 26: Revised text for D.10 NuSTAR Cycle 2

ROSES-15 Amendment 26: Revised text and new due date for D.10 NuSTAR Cycle 2

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) Guest Observer (GO) Program solicits proposals for basic research relevant to the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission, the first orbiting telescope to focus light in the high energy X-ray region of the electromagnetic spectrum (E > 10 keV), with an effective bandpass of 3 – 79 keV. In addition to investigations utilizing NuSTAR observations only, proposals involving coordinated observations with the European Space Agency/NASA XMM-Newton X-ray observatory are also solicited as part of this Call for Proposals.

This amendment releases final text for Program Element D.10 NuSTAR Cycle 2. The new text replaces in its entirety the prior version of the text released with ROSES-2015 in February 2015. The significant changes are as follows:

1. Cycle 2 Phase 1 Proposal due date has been delayed from November 16, 2015, to December 11, 2015;
2. Cycle 1 and 2 Observing periods have been extended by one month: Cycle 1 = April 1, 2015 – April 30, 2016; Cycle 2 = May 1, 2016 – May 31, 2017;
3. Due to the termination of operations of the Suzaku mission, joint NuSTAR-Suzaku observations are no longer possible;
4. Proposals for joint NuSTAR-XMM observations are now solicited under this call (Section 1.3.1)
5. Proposals for observations of anticipated Targets of Opportunity are now permitted in Cycle 2 (Section 1.3.3);
6. The policy regarding the disposition of Cycle 2 proposals for as yet unobserved Cycle 1 Category C targets is clarified (Section 1.3);
7. The time available for observations of bright sources has been increased from 300 ksec to 1 Msec in Cycle 2 (Section 1.3.1);
8. Limited funding is now available for support of Cycle 2 Category C U.S. Principal Investigator proposals (Section 2.1).

On or about September 10, 2015, this Amendment to the NASA Research Announcement “Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) 2015” (NNH15ZDA001N) will be posted on the NASA research opportunity homepage at http://nspires.nasaprs.com/ and will appear on the RSS feed at: http://nasascience.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/grant-solicitations/roses-2015

The NASA point of contact for programmatic information is Louis Kaluzienski, who may be reached at louis.j.kaluzienski@nasa.gov. Technical questions concerning this program element may be directed to Craig Markwardt at Craig.Markwardt@nasa.gov.