NASA seeks science investigations for Earth Venture Mission - 2

This week, NASA's Science Mission Directorate will release an Announcement of Opportunity (AO) to solicit Principal Investigator-led space-based science investigations for the Earth Venture Mission - 2 (EVM-2) element of the Earth System Science Pathfinder Program.

Earth Venture investigations must address NASA's goals to acquiredeeper scientific understanding of the components of the Earthsystem, their interactions, and the consequences to life of changes. “All investigations proposed in response to this solicitationmust be implemented through the provision of a complete spaceflightmission,” NASA officials said in contract documents released Tuesday.

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.

The key dates for this AO are:

• Sept. 3, 2015 - AO Release Date
• Sept. 17, 2015 - Preproposal Conference
• Oct. 2, 2015 - Notice of Intent to Propose Deadline
• Dec. 4, 2015 - Electronic Proposal Submittal Deadline
• Dec. 11, 2015 - Deadline for Receipt of Proposal on CD-ROMs
• August 2016 - Selections Announced (target)
• June 30, 2022 - Launch Readiness Date