9 September 2022
The Astrophysics Research and Analysis Program (APRA, D.3) solicits basic research proposals for investigations that are relevant to NASA's programs in astronomy and astrophysics and includes research over the entire range of photons, gravitational waves, and particle astrophysics. Proposals are solicited in the following five broad categories:
This APRA opportunity offers a suite of new-generation commercial suborbital platforms, made available via a partnership with NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program, to investigators at no additional cost. These new commercial capabilities are offered in addition to the traditional NASA-provided suborbital platforms. Proposers are invited to consider proposing innovative investigations to take advantage of new commercial suborbital platforms to increase the scientific yield and impact of the proposed research. SMD expects this to enable flying smaller payloads, with a commensurate decrease in cost, that take advantage of these capabilities at a higher cadence, provided that proposals are of sufficient merit.
ROSES-2022 Amendment 45 announces a major revision to the sections of D.3 APRA about Suborbital/suborbital-class investigations. In particular, suborbital investigations require a preliminary Payload Requirements Document (PRD) to be uploaded along with the mandatory Notice of Intent and a final PRD be uploaded along with the proposal. The changes were too numerous to be shown in the document. Instead, a succinct list of the changes is provided in the bold notice at the top of the program element text. The due dates are unchanged: Mandatory NOIs are due 21 October 2022, and proposals are due 15 December 2022. Questions about this amendment may be directed to Thomas.Hams-1@nasa.gov. Other questions about D.3 APRA may be directed to the appropriate point of contact given at the end of the text of the D.3 APRA program element [PDF] or Dominic Benford, the main point of contact for APRA, at Dominic.Benford@nasa.gov.