ESA Science & Technology - Suzaku (Astro-E2) Announcement of Opportunity

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), through the European Space Agency, invites participation of European scientists in the Suzaku (formerly Astro-E2) X-ray astronomy programme, specifically the Japanese portion of the observing time. Suzaku is a collaborative Japanese and U.S. mission which was launched in July 2005. Unfortunately a key scientific instrument, the X-ray spectrometer (XRS), was lost during commissioning. This loss means that the scientific objectives of the original AO-1 programme cannot be achieved and so the results will be discarded.

This letter is to inform you of the replacement of the original European Announcement of Opportunity (EAO-1) and to solicit proposals from scientists belonging to institutions within ESA Member States for observing time in the portion reserved for the ESA-Japan programme. The observing time covered by the new programme is to maximize the scientific return from the mission through co-operation between European and Japanese scientists. Thus, the European proposals are expected to involve one or more Japanese co-investigators. If the European proposers cannot identify Japanese co-investigators at the time of proposal submission, JAXA will help assigning Japanese co-investigators later.

8% of the total observing time will be allocated to successful proposals from ESA Member States. It should be noted that whilst hereby facilitating the process, ESA cannot provide funding for participation in this programme, full financial support must therefore be obtained through the usual national channels.

Proposals to participate in the Suzaku EAO-1 must be prepared in accordance with the information which will be available electronically from ESTEC at:

http://www.rssd.esa.int/Suzaku

And must be submitted electronically to ESA by 17:00 CET on 6 January 2006 at the latest with a copy to the relevant national funding institutions.

Proposals will be peer reviewed by an ESA established Time Allocation Committee and the top ranking proposals, in order of priority, will be forwarded to JAXA. It should be noted that more proposals will be forwarded for consideration than can be accommodated. The final selection of European proposals will be made by the Suzaku proposal merging committee. It is expected that the selection of European Guest Investigators will be announced towards the end of March 2006.

I would appreciate if you would circulate this Announcement to interested colleagues within your institute.

Yours Sincerely,

D.J. Southwood
Director
Scientific Programme