13 August 2021
The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) is an X-ray experiment on the International Space Station dedicated to high-resolution timing and spectroscopy of neutron stars and other rapidly variable X-ray sources in the 0.2–12 keV band. The NICER Guest Observer (GO) program Cycle 4 solicits proposals for observations with NICER. Proposers may also request coordinated NuSTAR observations of their proposed NICER targets.
The NICER GO program uses a two-phase proposal process. A Phase-1 proposal shall comprise the science/technical justification. Only proposers whose Phase-1 proposals are selected will be invited to submit budget proposals in Phase 2. The Phase-1 peer review will be executed in a "dual-anonymous" fashion, where not only are proposers unaware of the identity of review panel members, but the reviewers do not have explicit knowledge of the proposal teams.
ROSES-2021 Amendment 29 updates D.11 NICER Guest Observer Cycle 4 Sections 1.1, 1.3, and 2.1 to clarify proposal selection and fair share considerations. New text is in bold and deleted text is struck through. The due date for proposals remains unchanged; Phase-1 proposals are due 10 November 2021, via the Astrophysics Research Knowledgebase Remote Proposal System (ARK/RPS).
Please direct technical questions regarding NICER GO to the NICER PI, Keith Gendreau, at Keith.C.Gendreau@nasa.gov and Programmatic questions to the NICER Program Scientist, Roopesh Ojha, at Roopesh.Ojha@nasa.gov.