ESA Science & Technology - Announcement of Opportunity for the provision of scientific payload including SGS elements for the M3 mission candidates

Direct link to this AO web page:
http://sci.esa.int/M3-payload-AO

Update - 9 November 2012: The Proposal Submission Form is online.

Update - 18 October 2012: The Q&A pages, answering questions related to this AO, are now online (see right-hand menu).

Update - 11 October 2012: Presentations from the briefing meeting are available for download (see below).

Update - 5 October 2012: Additional information on the briefing meeting has been added (see below).

Update - 2 October 2012: Additional information on the briefing meeting has been added (see below).

The four missions, EChO, LOFT, MarcoPolo-R and STE-QUEST, were selected in February 2011, as candidates for a "Medium-class Mission" launch opportunity, with a foreseen launch date in either 2022 or 2024 (depending on the evolution of the Science Programme, including the confirmation for launch in 2022 of the L1 mission JUICE).

The primary objective of the present AO is to select, for each candidate mission, Consortium(a) that would be in charge – should the mission be selected - of the provision of the ESA Member State-funded payload elements of the space segment and for the associated contribution to the science ground segment.

The AO is open to scientists from the Member States of ESA and other communities with which reciprocity or specific agreements exist (such as USA, Russia, Japan). The AO solicits proposals from scientific Consortia supported by funding agencies in Member States (or from the respective funding agencies in the case of other communities), for carrying out Phase A study activities for the scientific payload onboard each of the four candidate M3 missions until the end of Q3-2013.

The M3 mission selection process is planned to be completed by the end of 2013. Consortia have to indicate their readiness (and the readiness from the relevant funding agencies) to carry out the Phase A activities and to subsequently provide the flight and SGS elements and to support the mission, should it be the one selected, throughout its life cycle, including data processing.

Payloads that address the primary science objectives of the candidate missions, as described in the original mission proposals on the basis of which the missions have been selected for study, and the resulting requirements, as listed in the Science Requirements Documents (Sci-RD), will be given priority in the selection process. However, proposals addressing other science goals are not excluded a priori.

Note: Only Payload Consortia that will submit a Letter of Intent (LOI) by 5 October 2012 will be allowed to submit a proposal. 

Briefing Meeting

A briefing meeting will be held at ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands. The meeting date in the announcement letter is superseded and the meeting is now confirmed for 10 October 2012, from 10:00 to 16:00 CEST, in room Newton 2.

Prospective Consortia are required to register their participants to the briefing meeting, up to three persons per Consortium, by sending their names and affiliations to the relevant mission contact email address given below.

WebEx and telephone access information for the meeting will be sent to the registered participants.

Update - 11 October 2012: The presentations from the briefing meeting can be downloaded in PDF format by clicking the links in the "download" column of the agenda above. 

Timeline of Events
 

 

Documentation

The documentation for this AO can be downloaded from the dedicated section in the right-hand menu. The AO itself and the Announcement Letter are available as pdf files. In addition, four separate Proposal Information Packages (PIPs) are provided as four zip files, one for each candidate mission.

Each PIP contains the following documents for the respective mission:
  - Science Requirements Document (Sci-RD)
  - Mission Requirements Document (MRD)
  - Experiment Interface Document-Part A (EID-A)
  - Experiment Interface Document-Part B (EID-B) template
  - Payload cost spreadsheet template

Additional documents provided in the PIP for EChO:
  - Environmental Specifications (ES)
  - Payload Definition Document (PDD)
  - Radiometric Model Document (RMD)
  - Baseline Telescope Description (BTD)
  - Format for the prescription of optics (FPO)
  - Mission Analysis Guidelines (MAG)

Additional documents provided in the PIP for LOFT:
  - Payload Definition Document (PDD)
  - Environment Specification (ES)
  - Mission Analysis Guidelines (MAG)

Additional documents provided in the PIP for MarcoPolo-R:
  - Payload Resources and Requirements Document (PRRD)
  - Environment Specification (ES)
  - Planetary Protection Requirements (PP)
  - Mission Analysis Guidelines (MAG)

Additional documents provided in the PIP for STE-QUEST:
  - Environmental Specification (ES)
  - Payload Definition Document (PDD)
  - Mission Analysis Guidelines (MAG)

Letter of Intent (LOI) submission

Prospective Consortia are required to submit, by 5 October 2012, at 12:00 CEST (noon), a Letter of Intent (LOI) stating their intention to submit a proposal in response to the present AO. Submission of a LOI is mandatory; proposals not preceded by a corresponding LOI will not be considered.

Submissions are accepted exclusively in electronic form, in PDF format, using the online submission form, which is accessible below and from the right-hand menu (the form opens in a new window).

 
Proposal submission

Submissions are accepted exclusively in electronic form, using the online submission form that is accessible below and from the right-hand menu (the form opens in a new window).

Each proposal must consist of the following elements:

The different Parts of the proposal, including the Executive Summary, shall each have a cover page. The Parts shall be provided in separate PDF files, except for the Financial Plan that must be submitted as a spreadsheet following the template provided in the PIP.
For full details of what each proposal Part shall cover, please refer to the AO document.
NOTE: the final proposal documents shall not be locked or protected.
NOTE: each individual PDF file must be less than 50 MB. The maximum total size of all files combined is 400 MB.

Submission deadline: 30 November 2012, 12:00 CET (noon)

ESA will confirm by e-mail the reception of the proposal. 

Letters of Endorsement may be submitted to the relevant e-mail addresses listed below after this date, but not later than 14 December 2012, 12:00 CET (noon).

 
Contact

Requests for further information and clarification should be addressed to the following e-mail addresses relevant for each mission:

EChO	EChOrssd.esa.int
LOFT	LOFTrssd.esa.int
MarcoPolo-R	MaPoRrssd.esa.int
STE-QUEST	STEQUESTrssd.esa.int

A briefing meeting intended to clarify technical and/or programmatic issues will be held at ESTEC, Noordwijk. Questions about the AO documentation and process can be sent to the different e-mail addresses above, as appropriate, by the same deadline as for the Letters of Intent, 5 October 2012.

Prospective Consortia are required to register their participants to the briefing meeting, up to three persons per Consortium, by sending their names and affiliations to the relevant mission contact email address above.