This community announcement is an advance notice of the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) plan to release a new program element in Appendix C of the Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences-2016 (ROSES-2016) NASA Research Announcement. This new program element, Concepts for Ocean worlds Life Detection Technology (COLDTech), will support the development of technology beneficial for surface and subsurface missions to explore ocean worlds such as Europa and Enceladus. Specifically, COLDTech will seek to advance the maturity of science instruments and sample acquisition and delivery systems for such missions. While instruments focused on the detection of extant life in the ocean worlds of the outer Solar System are especially of interest, COLDTech will not be limited to such instruments.

The Planetary Science Division expects to release COLDTech as program element C.20 of ROSES-2016 within the next month, and proposals will be due approximately 90 days after release.