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NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) has announced the release of its annual omnibus solicitation for basic and applied research, Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES) 2018 at http://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2018.

ROSES is an omnibus solicitation, with many individual program elements, each with its own due dates and topics. Table 2 and Table 3 of the NASA Research Announcement (NRA) provide proposal due dates and hyperlinks to descriptions of the solicited program elements in the Appendices of this NRA.

All together these program elements cover the wide range of basic and applied supporting research and technology in space and Earth sciences supported by SMD. The topics and types of proposals solicited include flight investigations, using suborbital-class platforms (including aircraft, balloons, sounding rockets, CubeSats, commercial suborbital reusable launch vehicles, and small International Space Station payloads), and all kinds of ground-based supporting research and technology investigations that seek to understand naturally occurring space and Earth phenomena, human-induced changes in the Earth system, and Earth and space science-related technologies and to support the national goals for further robotic and human exploration of space. These ground-based investigations include, but are not limited to: theory, modeling, and analysis of SMD science data, (together with data from SMD’s international and/or interagency partners) development of concepts, techniques and advanced technologies suitable for future SMD space missions; development of methods for laboratory analysis of both extraterrestrial samples returned by spacecraft and terrestrial samples that support or otherwise help verify observations from missions; determination of atomic and composition parameters needed to analyze space data, as well as returned samples from the Earth or space; Earth surface observations and field campaigns that support SMD science missions; development of integrated Earth system models; development of systems for applying Earth science research data to societal needs; and development of applied information systems applicable to SMD objectives and data.

The ROSES NRA is structured to allow awards to be made as grants, cooperative agreements, contracts, and inter- or intra-agency transfers, depending on the nature of the work proposed, the proposing organization, and/or program requirements. However, most extramural awards deriving from ROSES are grants and many program elements of ROSES exclude contracts because it would not be appropriate for the nature of the work solicited. The typical period of performance for an award is three years, but some programs may allow up to five years and others specify shorter periods. Organizations of every type, domestic and foreign, Government and private, for profit and not-for-profit, may submit proposals without restriction on teaming arrangements. Note that it is NASA policy that all research involving non-U.S. organizations will be conducted on the basis of no exchange of funds.

Awards range from under $100K per year for focused, limited efforts (e.g., data analysis) to more than $1M per year for extensive activities (e.g., development of hardware for science experiments and/or flight).

The funds available for awards in each program element offered in ROSES-2018 range from less than one to several million dollars, which allows for selection from a few to as many as several dozen proposals, depending upon the program objectives and the submission of proposals of merit.

Electronic submission of proposals is required by the respective due dates for each program element and must be submitted by an authorized official of the proposing organization. Electronic proposals may be submitted via the NASA proposal data system NSPIRES or via Grants.gov.

Every organization that intends to submit a proposal in response to ROSES-2018 must be registered with NSPIRES; organizations that intend to submit proposals via Grants.gov must be registered with Grants.gov, in addition to being registered with NSPIRES. Such registration must identify the authorized organizational representative(s) (AOR) who will submit the electronic proposal. All Principal Investigators (PIs) and other participants e.g., Co-Investigators (Co-Is) must be registered in NSPIRES regardless of the submission system. Potential proposers and proposing organizations are urged to access the system(s) well in advance of the proposal due date(s) of interest to familiarize themselves with its structure and to enter the requested information.

Notices of intent to propose and Step-1 Proposals are due mid-March 2018, through January 2019. Full (Step-2) Proposals are due: May 2018 through April 2019.

To learn of the addition of new program elements and all amendments to this NRA, proposers may subscribe to:

(1) The SMD mailing lists (by logging in at http://nspires.nasaprs.com/ and checking the appropriate boxes under “Account Management” and “Email Subscriptions”),
(2) The ROSES-2018 RSS feed for amendments, clarifications, and corrections to at http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/grant-solicitations/ROSES-2018/, and
(3) The ROSES-2018 due date Google calendar. Instructions are at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/library-and-useful-links (link from the words due date calendar).

Frequently asked questions about ROSES-2018 will be posted at http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/faqs/. Further information about specific program elements may be obtained, after the release of ROSES-2018, from the individual Program Officers listed in the Summary of Key Information for each program element in the Appendices of ROSES-2018 and at http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/program-officers-list/.

Questions concerning general ROSES-2018 policies and procedures may be directed to Max Bernstein, Lead for Research, Science Mission Directorate, at sara@nasa.gov.