NASA Artemis III Deployed Instruments Call – Lunar Surface Science Payloads

F.12 Artemis III Deployed Instruments (A3DI) solicits both standalone instruments and instrument suites to conduct high-priority science investigations that can be uniquely accomplished by human deployment of payloads on the surface of the Moon during Artemis III.

Deployed instruments consist of autonomous instrument packages installed on the lunar surface by astronauts during extravehicular activities (EVAs). Proposed deployed instruments must address one or more of the scientific objectives outlined in the Artemis III Science Definition Team (SDT) Report. NASA encourages the development of instruments that can address more than one measurement need and/or science investigation. Proposals must include:

• Expected science results from the investigation;
• Instrument concept of operations, including why crew are needed for deployment, how the instrument is to be deployed, any special requirements for deployment (i.e., positioning, surface slope, etc.), an estimate of the crew time needed for deployment, and an overview of the real-time ground-based science support needed to deploy the instrument during EVA;
• Resource requirements for the proposed investigation including cost, mass, volume, power, telemetry, data transfer need, astronaut interaction, etc.;
• Demonstration of adherence to basic safety requirements and human factors design.

ROSES-2023 Amendment 26 releases the final text and due dates for F.12 Artemis III Deployed Instruments, which was previously released as draft. Step-1 proposals are due June 30, 2023, and Step-2 proposals are due August 31, 2023.

A brief summary of the changes between draft and final are given in the bold notice at the top of the program element text. The FAQ posted under other documents on the NSPIRES page for this program element has been updated.

A Pre-proposal Conference is scheduled for June 14, 2023, and a BPS Virtual Workshop is scheduled for June 9, 2023; see Section 3.5 for more information.

On or about May 30, 2023, this Amendment to the NASA Research Announcement “Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) 2023” (NNH23ZDA001N) will be posted on the NASA research opportunity homepage at https://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2023 and will appear on SARA’s ROSES blog at: https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/grant-solicitations/roses-2023

Questions or comments concerning the F.12 A3DI may be directed to Ryan Watkins and Amanda Nahm at HQ-ArtemisInstruments@mail.nasa.gov.