Announcement of opportunity
for ESA-appointed scientists
in the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission

29 August 2023

This Announcement of Opportunity (AO) solicits the participation of the scientific community of ESA Member States in the role of ESA-appointed scientists in the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) mission. Through the appointment, ESA intends to gather independent advice for optimising the usage of the mission by the general scientific community.

Roman is a NASA-led observatory designed to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. The telescope has a primary mirror of 2.4 metres in diameter, and will carry two instruments: the Wide Field Instrument (WFI), and the Coronagraph Instrument (CI). The WFI is a 300-megapixel multi-band visible and near-infrared camera with a field of view of 0.28 square degrees, while the Coronagraph Instrument is a high-contrast, small field of view camera and spectrometer covering the visible and near-infrared wavelengths using starlight suppression techniques. The scientific objectives of the mission include probing the history of the Universe and the growth of cosmic structure, with the goal of measuring the effects of dark energy, as well as searching for exoplanets in the Milky Way using gravitational micro-lensing. The Roman Space Telescope will have a primary mission lifetime of five years, with a potential five year extended mission.

The Science Programme Committee approved ESA participation in the Roman mission as a Mission of Opportunity at its meeting in June 2019. Roman is scheduled to launch not later than May 2027.

ESA intends to appoint a number of individual scientists to the Core Community Survey (CCS) committees, the WFI Project Infrastructure Teams (PIT), and to the Coronagraph Community Participation Programme (CCPP). The ESA-appointed positions will be for a period of three years, renewable. With the exception of expenses incurred while travelling for activities related to the current call, ESA will not fund the activities of the scientist and each proposer is responsible for securing his/her own funding from other sources.

Full details of this AO can be found in the Announcement of opportunity for ESA-appointed scientists in the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission document.

Letter of Intent and Proposal Submission forms

Proposals in response to this AO must be preceded by a mandatory Letter of Intent. Proposals not preceded by a Letter of Intent will not be considered. The Letters of Intent and proposals must be submitted using the online forms – see links to the forms below or in the left-hand menu.

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Schedule for this call and important dates

Contact

Requests for further information should be addressed to:

Paul McNamara
​​​​Astronomy and Astrophysics Coordinator
ESA/ESTEC (SCI-CS)
2200 AG Noordwijk
The Netherlands
e-mail: Paul.McNamaraesa.int

and

Marco Sirianni ​​
Roman Science Operations Scientist
ESA Office - STScI
Baltimore, MD 21218
USA

e-mail: Marco.Sirianniesa.int

Last updated: 20 October 2023

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