ESA Science & Technology - Announcement of Opportunity for Science Planners in the NASA-led IRIS Mission

The outcome of this Announcement of Opportunity was that the following scientists (listed in alphabetical order) were appointed as science planners:

• Ada Ortiz-Carbonell, Instituto de Astrofısica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), Spain
• Daniel F. Ryan, Royal Observatory of Belgium
• Gregal Joan Maria Vissers,  Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, Oslo, Norway

This Announcement of Opportunity (AO) solicits proposals for participation in the NASA-led IRIS mission from scientists working in the ESA Member States, under the form of Science Planners.

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) is a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) mission, launched in 2013, that allows tracing the flow of solar energy and plasma from the photosphere through the chromosphere and transition region into the corona using spectroscopy and imaging in ultraviolet windows between 130 and 283 nm. IRIS can reveal the dynamics of the chromosphere and transition region, and allow understanding the processes powering them. IRIS is a major leap from previous and existing solar spectrographs (e.g., SOHO/CDS or SUMER, Hinode/EIS) in terms of spatial (0.3-0.4 arcsec), temporal (2 s) and spectral (3 km/s) resolution.

At its meeting in November 2014, ESA’s Science Programme Committee (SPC), approved ESA’s participation in IRIS under the form of a “Mission of Opportunity”. The ESA participation to the IRIS mission entails the access of competitively selected scientists based in ESA Member States to the mission’s observations.

The present Announcement of Opportunity (AO) solicits proposals for participation in the IRIS mission from scientists working in the ESA Member States, under the form of “Science Planners”. A maximum of three scientists will be appointed through the present AO. The appointment period will be for one year.

Full details of the appointment requirements and conditions, the required content of the proposal, and the evaluation criteria are given in the Announcement document.

AO schedule and deadlines

Proposal submission

Details of the required contents of the proposal can be found in the Announcement document. Proposals shall be submitted electronically in PDF format to the following e-mail address:

and must be received not later than:

The subject line of the e-mail containing the proposal must say “Proposal for IRIS science planner”. Proposers will receive confirmation upon successful receipt of their proposals.

Contact

Further queries should be addressed to:

Bernhard Fleck (Bernhard.Fleckesa.int)
ESA Project Scientist for IRIS

with copy to:

Arvind Parmar (Arvind.Parmaresa.int)
Head of the Scientific Support Office (SRE-S)

and

Luigi Colangeli (Luigi.Collangeliesa.int)
Head of the Coordination Office for the Scientific Programme (SRE-CS)