On or about May 12, 2015, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is releasing for community comment a draft version of an Announcement of Opportunity (AO) to solicit Principal Investigator (PI)-led space-based science investigations for the Earth Venture Mission - 2 (EVM-2) element of the Earth System Science Pathfinder (ESSP) Program. Upon the release date, all related information and links to the full text of the draft solicitation will be available at the NSPIRES Website (http://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/ ) and at the EVM-2 Acquisition Homepage (http://essp.larc.nasa.gov/EVM-2/ ).

The Earth Venture element of the ESSP Program conducts Principal Investigator (PI)-led science investigations relevant to SMD's Earth Science research program. Earth Venture investigations must address NASA's goals to acquire deeper scientific understanding of the components of the Earth system, their interactions, and the consequences to life of changes in the Earth system. All investigations proposed in response to this solicitation must be implemented through the provision of a complete spaceflight mission. The term complete encompasses all appropriate mission phases from project initiation (Phase A) through mission operations (Phase E) and closeout (Phase F), which must include analysis and publication of data in the peer reviewed scientific literature and delivery of the data to an appropriate NASA data archive. The term spaceflight missions for this EVM-2 AO is defined as Earth orbital and deep-space missions in a dedicated spacecraft or as a hosted payload; it specifically excludes International Space Station payloads and suborbital missions, such as those flown via sounding rockets, balloons, and aircraft. These spaceflight missions will be used to conduct innovative, integrated, hypothesis, or scientific question-driven investigations addressing pressing Earth system science issues.

Participation is open to all categories of organizations or institutions, U.S. or non-U.S., including educational, industrial, and not-for-profit institutions, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), NASA Centers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and other Government agencies.

A draft AO Prospective Bidders Telecon/WebEx will be held on May 29, 2015.

See http://essp.larc.nasa.gov/E VM-2/evm-2_prebidwkshp.html for more information. The comment period for the draft EVM-2 solicitation ends on June 12, 2015.

The issuance of the draft EVM-2 solicitation does not obligate NASA to issue the solicitation and accept proposals. Any costs incurred by prospective investigators in preparing submissions in response to this draft solicitation are incurred completely at the submitter's own risk. Responses to all inquiries may be abridged for brevity, paraphrased to ensure anonymity, and posted at the EVM-2 Questions and Answers (Q&As) location of the EVM-2 Acquisition Homepage at http://essp.larc.nasa.gov/EVM-2/ ; anonymity of persons/institutions who submit questions will be preserved. Questions and comments may be addressed in writing or by E-mail to the EVM-2 Program Scientist: Ramesh Kakar, Earth Science Division, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC 20546-0001; Tel: 202-358-0240; E-mail: [email protected] (subject line to read "EVM-2 draft").