Draft Announcement of Opportunity for New Frontiers Program – 2003 and Missions of Opportunity

RELEASE DATE: April 30, 2003

COMMENT DUE DATE: May 14, 2003

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Office of
Space Science is releasing a DRAFT Announcement of Opportunity (AO)
for community review and comment for the New Frontiers Program-2003
and Missions of Opportunity. Selections of proposals through the
final AO, once released, are intended to select investigations for
two different types of scientific investigations: (i) New Frontiers
Mission investigations specifically for the planet Venus, the
Earth’s Moon, Jupiter, or a comet nucleus; and (ii) Mission of
Opportunity investigations for all Solar System objects except
Mars.

New Frontiers Mission investigations are to be completed through
space flight missions launched on Expendable Launch Vehicles (ELV’s)
no later than December 31, 2009, and accomplish the proposed
investigation for a total NASA OSS cost not to exceed $650M in
Fiscal Year (FY) 2003 dollars. Proposals submitted in response to
this AO for New Frontiers Mission investigations must be for
complete investigations, defined as a concept study (Phase A),
preliminary design (Phase B); final design and development of all
flight experiment hardware, spacecraft bus, and mission
operations software and equipment (Phase C); spacecraft assembly,
test, and launch operations (Phase D); mission operations and data
analysis (Phase E); and, if applicable and approved, extended
mission operations (Phase F). Missions must include analysis and
publication of data in the peer reviewed scientific literature,
delivery of the data to NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS), and full
implementation of an Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) program
related to the mission.

Proposals that describe only portions of investigations (such as the
provision of an instrument as part of a non-U.S. mission) may, if
appropriate, be proposed as Mission of Opportunity (MO)
investigations. In any event, an MO investigation is defined as
being part of a “parent” non-OSS space mission of any size whose
sponsor requires a commitment of selection and support from NASA
before December 31, 2005, that may be accomplished at a cost to NASA
OSS of $35M (FY 2003 dollars) or less and that addresses any of the
OSS Solar System Exploration (SSE) science objectives except those
concerning Mars. Such MO investigations may involve: (i) the
provision of flight hardware followed by data analysis, (ii) the
development of physical models and their application to both the
design of the experiment hardware and/or interpretation of flight
data, and/or (iii) the analysis of science data taken by the parent
mission. An MO investigations may not wholly substitute for a Data
Analysis program that comes more appropriately after data are placed
in the archive. In any event, MO investigations are generally
conducted on a no-exchange-of-funds basis with the organization
sponsoring the parent mission. MO investigations may be approved
through the New Frontiers Program when their perceived value is high
and their proposed cost to NASA OSS is within the above funding
limits.

Participation in the New Frontiers program is open to all categories
of organizations, foreign and domestic, including industry,
educational institutions, nonprofit organizations, NASA centers, and
other Government agencies.

NASA welcomes critical review and comment of this DRAFT AO, which
will be available on or about April 30, 2003, through May 14, 2003,
via the World Wide Web site:

http://research.hq.nasa.gov/code_s/open.cfm

Send comments to Dr. Thomas H. Morgan, Solar System Exploration
Division, Code SE, Office of Space Science, NASA Headquarters,
Washington, DC 20546-0001; FAX: (202) 358-3091; or E-mail:
thomas.h.morgan@nasa.gov, with the subject line “NFAO”. The
identities of those submitting comments will be held in confidence
and will not be retained by NASA after the comment period activities
are concluded.