Announcement of Opportunity

for the operations and scientific exploitation

of the SPICE instrument

on board the Solar Orbiter mission

27 June 2016

This Announcement of Opportunity (AO) solicits proposals for the provision of the operations and scientific exploitation of the SPICE instrument on board the Solar Orbiter mission

Direct link to this page: 

http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/call-for-spice-operations/home 

Solar Orbiter is the first M-class mission of ESA's Cosmic Vision programme. The mission is devoted to solar and heliospheric physics and will provide unprecedented close-up and high-latitude observations of the Sun and inner heliosphere. The mission will be carried out as an ESA mission, in collaboration with NASA, open to the worldwide science community.

The science payload of Solar Orbiter comprises both remote-sensing and in situ instruments. The in situ instruments will operate continuously. During each orbit, the complete instrument suite will be operated around closest approach, and at the minimum and maximum heliographic latitudes – the segments of the orbit where Solar Orbiter will be farthest below and above the solar equator. Since the orbital characteristics will change in the course of the mission, individual orbits will be dedicated to specific science questions.

The SPICE (Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment) instrument will perform extreme ultraviolet imaging spectroscopy to remotely characterize plasma properties of the Sun's on-disc corona. This will enable matching in-situ composition signatures of solar wind streams to their source regions on the Sun's surface.

The SPICE instrument is being procured under ESA's responsibility and ESA's role will end with the in-flight commissioning.

This Announcement of Opportunity (AO) is intended to select the Consortium for the provision of the operations and scientific exploitation of the SPICE instrument. 

The AO is open to scientists from the Member States of ESA.

SCHEDULE AND DEADLINES

DOCUMENTATION

Details of the Call are available in the Announcement document. The Letter of invitation, the Announcement document and the Proposals Information Package can be downloaded from the right-hand menu, under "Documentation".

Letters of intent shall be limited in length to 4 A4 pages (minimum font size 11 pt). A description of the purpose of the LoI and the expected content is available in the Announcement document.

Proposals are accepted exclusively in electronic form, in PDF format, using the online submission form that can be accessed below or from the left-hand menu

and must be received not later than the date reported in the table above.

CONTACT