The NASA Science Mission Directorate Planetary Science Division intends to release a Draft Cooperative Agreement Notice (CAN) soliciting team-based proposals for membership in the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) in June 2013. Comments will be due three weeks after the release of the draft and the final CAN will be released early fall 2013. Proposals will be due early calendar year 2014.

The NASA Astrobiology Institute was established in 1998 as an institution of scientific collaboration across disciplines, across organizations, and within and among its participating Teams irrespective of their geographic distribution. A large amount of reference material is available at the Institute’s website, http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/, which provides proposers with details of the research suite, activities, and administrative history of the NAI.

The upcoming CAN represents Cycle-7 of the NAI team-based proposal opportunities. The goal of CAN 7 is to maintain a multidisciplinary institute by selecting focused, interdisciplinary teams that complement without replicating the strengths of the continuing teams. The teams selected in Cycle-7 will replace the teams selected in Cycle- 5 whose five-year Cooperative Agreements are expiring. It is anticipated that the number of teams selected in Cycle-7 will be fewer (five to seven teams) than the number selected in Cycle-5 (10 teams).

Unlike previous CANs for the NAI, CAN 7 will require an extended Notice of Intent (NOI) be submitted six weeks after the release of the CAN. Based on a programmatic review of the NOIs, proposers will be encouraged to or discouraged from submitting a full proposal.

The time line for the CAN 7 solicitation is intended to be:

Release of Draft CAN……………………….June 2013
Release of Final CAN……………………….September 2013
Pre-proposal conference……………………..~2 weeks after final CAN release
NOI due………………………………………~5 weeks after final CAN release
Proposal Due…………………………………~16 weeks after final CAN release
Selection of CAN 7 teams……………………July 2014 (target)
Start of new awards……………..……………October 2014

NASA has not approved the issuance of the CAN and this notification does not obligate NASA to issue the CAN and solicit proposals. Any costs incurred by prospective investigators in preparing submission in response to this notification or the planned Draft CAN are incurred completely at the submitters’ own risk.

Further information will be posted through the NSPIRES system (http://nspires.nasaprs.com) as it becomes available. Those individuals registered through NSPIRES should also receive automated E-mail notices.

Questions and comments related to this announcement should be addressed to Mary Voytek, NASA Astrobiology Institute Program Scientist, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Washington DC 20546 (E-mail: mary.voytek-1@nasa.gov).

Please note that all information that can be released at this time has already been released through this notice.