Please welcome the new Interim Director of Iowa NASA EPSCoR, Dr. Sara Nelson! She brings expertise from her work as Assistant Director for Education & Outreach with the Iowa Space Grant Consortium, as well as years as a faculty member of the School of Education. With STEM research, and work with Iowa State Extension in Youth and 4-H, Dr. Nelson will push Iowa NASA EPSCoR forward with her drive for STEM excellence at all levels.

As we welcome Sara, we also bid a fond farewell and a big GOOD LUCK to Tomas Gonzalez-Torres, who has taken a position back with NASA as the Space Grant Project Manager. Tomas will be greatly missed, and we appreciate all of his great effort with the EPSCoR program! Best of luck in your new career!

We are pleased to announce that the Iowa NASA EPSCoR program was awarded with a new Research Infrastructure Development grant! The new award will take us all the way through 2027, helping to provide seed funding and travel grants to further collaborations between our Iowa researchers and NASA!

Science & engineering doctoral candidates, recent PhDs, postdocs, & junior faculty who are U.S. Citizens or legal permanent residents (and a very limited number of Foreign Nationals from non-designated counties) are eligible.

Offered by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, PSSS is a career development experience with a workload of a rigorous 3-hour graduate-level course. Learn the development of a hypothesis-driven planetary science robotic mission in a concurrent engineering environment while getting an in-depth, first-hand look at mission design, life cycle, costs, schedule & the trade-offs inherent in each.

Spend 10 weeks in preparatory webinars acting as a science mission team. Then your final culminating week is mentored by JPL’s Advance Project Design Team to refine your mission concept design & present it to a mock expert review board. The culminating week is typically at JPL, however in 2022 it is likely to be virtual due to Covid-19 pandemic conditions.

See flyer for more information and links!

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) announces the release of its annual omnibus solicitation for basic and applied research, Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES) 2022 as NNH22ZDA001N on or about February 14, 2022, on the NSPIRES web page at http://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2022.  *Please note that this opportunity is independent of the NASA EPSCoR program.

ROSES is an omnibus solicitation, with many individual program elements, each with its own due dates and topics. Table 2 and Table 3 of this NRA, which will be posted at http://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2022table2 and http://solicitation.nasaprs.com/ROSES2022table3, respectively, provide proposal due dates and hypertext links to descriptions of the solicited program elements in the Appendices of this NRA. 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 ROSES NRA is written to allow program elements to issue 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 will be grants, and almost all program elements of ROSES specifically exclude contracts because it would not be appropriate for the nature of the work solicited. 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). Periods of performance are typically three years, but some programs may allow up to five years and others specify shorter periods.

The funds available and the anticipated number of awards are given in each program element and range from less than one to several million dollars, which allows for selection from a few to as many as several dozen proposals.

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-2022 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 proposal team members must be registered in NSPIRES regardless of the submission system, so we may perform automatic organizational conflict of interest checking of reviewers. 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 will be due starting in April 2022 and full (step-2) proposals will be due no earlier than May 16, 2022, through no later than May 12, 2023, by which time it is expected that the first full (Step-2) proposal due dates for next ROSES solicitation will begin.

Potential proposers are strongly encouraged to read Section I(d) of the ROSES Summary of Solicitation that lists Significant Changes from Recent ROSES.

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

(1)  Subscribe to the SMD mailing lists (by logging in at http://nspires.nasaprs.com/ and checking the appropriate boxes under “Account Management” and “Email Subscriptions”) and

(2) Get automatic updates of due dates using the ROSES-2022 due date Google calendar. Instructions will be available shortly after release at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/library-and-useful-links (link from the words due date calendar).

(3) and checking the ROSES-2022 Blog at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/grant-solicitations/roses-2022/

Frequently asked questions about ROSES-2022 will be posted at http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/faqs/ shortly after release.

Questions concerning the individual program elements in ROSES should be directed to the point(s) of contact in the Summary Table of Key Information at the end of the program element and at http://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/program-officers-list/.

Subject matter experts are encouraged to sign up to be a volunteer reviewer at https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/volunteer-review-panels

Questions concerning general ROSES-2022 policies and procedures may be directed to Max Bernstein, Lead for Research, Science Mission Directorate, at sara@nasa.gov.

Click the link below to register!

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nasamsfc-academic-partnering-workshop-tickets-251306663997

Notices of Intent Due: March 2, 2022

Proposals Due: March 31, 2022

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Headquarters has released a solicitation, titled Early Career Faculty (ECF), as an appendix to the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) umbrella NASA Research Announcement (NRA) titled “Space Technology Research, Development, Demonstration, and Infusion 2022 (SpaceTech-REDDI-2022), on February 2, 2022. The solicitation is available at the following link: https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/summary.do?solId={BF27BB84-C93F-9D37-4FFE-8790D23AD076}&path=&method=init

The Space Technology Research Grants (STRG) Program within STMD seeks proposals from accredited U.S. universities on behalf of their outstanding new faculty members who intend to develop academic careers related to space technology.

Proposals must address one of the following topics:

Topic 1 – Development of Lightweight Solar Sail Attitude Control Technologies

Topic 2 – Hibernation and Recovery of Solar-Powered Systems for Lunar Missions

Topic 3 – Tailorable Composite Design Concepts towards Dimensionally Stable Structures

Only accredited U.S. universities are eligible to submit proposals on behalf of their outstanding new faculty members who intend to develop academic careers related to space technology. The PI must be an untenured Assistant Professor on the tenure track at the sponsoring U.S. university at the time of award. The PI must be a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or have lawful status of permanent residency. The PI must be the primary researcher on the effort; Co-Investigators are not permitted. Collaborators (other than NASA civil servants/JPL) are permitted. See the solicitation (Section 3.0) for complete requirements regarding eligibility and for definitions and restrictions regarding collaborators.

A PI may submit only one proposal in response to this appendix.

NASA encourages submission of ECF proposals on behalf of early career faculty members at all U.S. universities and especially encourages proposals on behalf of women, members of underrepresented minority groups, and persons with disabilities. The financial and programmatic support for ECF comes from the Space Technology Research Grants Program within the Space Technology Mission Directorate. Awards are planned to start in early October 2022. NASA plans to make approximately 6 awards as a result of this ECF solicitation, subject to the receipt of meritorious proposals and the availability of funds. The actual number of awards will depend on the quality of the proposals received; NASA reserves the right to make no awards under this solicitation.

All proposals must be submitted electronically through NSPIRES or through Grants.gov (www.grants.gov) by an authorized organizational representative. Notices of Intent are strongly encouraged by March 2, 2022. Proposals are due on or before March 31, 2022. Detailed submission instructions are provided in the solicitation. Potential proposers and their proposing organizations are urged to familiarize themselves with the submission system(s), ensure they are registered in NSPIRES, and submit the required proposal materials well in advance of the deadline.

Technical and programmatic comments and questions may be addressed by email to the Space Technology Research Grants Program Executive, Claudia Meyer, at hq-ecf-call@mail.nasa.gov. Responses to inquiries will be answered by email and may also be included in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) documents located on the NSPIRES page associated with the solicitation; anonymity of persons/institutions who submit questions will be preserved.