Status Report

Invitation to Attend National Colloquium by Dr. Thomas H. Zurbuchen

By SpaceRef Editor
May 30, 2019
Filed under ,

The science community is invited to participate in an upcoming colloquium on the topic of “Writing Successful Mission Proposals: Observations from NASA”.  Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, will be speaking Wednesday, June 5, 2019 from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM EDT (2:00 to 4:00 PM MDT) from the University of Colorado Boulder campus and his talk will be live-streamed.  If you would like to attend in person, please RSVP at: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/8050D4FA9AE2FA1F85-colloquium.  The live-stream is available: https://cires.colorado.edu/zurbuchen2019 and registration for viewing the live-stream is not required.

 

The colloquium will be recorded and made available on https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/new-pi-resources for those not able to participate on Wednesday.

 

Talk Abstract:

 

Writing Successful Mission Proposals: Observations From NASA


NASA’s Science missions support the US science community and its partners to discover the secrets of the universe, to find life elsewhere, and to protect and improve life on Earth. In this pursuit, NASA relies heavily on the innovation and excellence of the science community to develop new mission concepts that expand our capabilities and grow our portfolio. Based on guidance from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and given the demonstrated successes of this approach, most NASA missions are initiated in response to proposals from teams led by principal investigators (PIs). For such proposing teams, this is a challenging and highly competitive process, composed of multiple phases. 

 

Dr. Thomas H. Zurbuchen will first describe this process and relevant stakeholders along the way. He will then examine the characteristics of proposals submitted during the past 20 years – both the ones that were selected for flight and the ones that were not – to share lessons learned about what makes a proposal successful, common mistakes, and experiences from the point-of-view of both proposers and the NASA selection official. Dr. Zurbuchen will also provide a brief update on how the mission review process has changed over the past 2-3 years and how it may evolve in the near future. The target audience for this talk are researchers who are thinking about being a PI or joining a proposal team. 

 

Study done by T. H. Zurbuchen, M. H. New, P. Hertz, E. Gertsen

 

SpaceRef staff editor.