​​ANNOUNCEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY
FOR AN ESA APPOINTED SCIENTIST
IN THE EINSTEIN PROBE MISSION

18 June 2021

The purpose of this Announcement of Opportunity (AO) is to solicit the participation of the scientific community in the role of an ESA appointed scientist in the Einstein Probe (EP) mission. This AO is open to scientists based in ESA Member States. Through the appointment, ESA intends to gather independent advice for optimising the exploitation of the mission by the general scientific community.

EP is a small satellite dedicated to time-domain astronomy to monitor the sky in the soft X-ray band. It is a mission led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences with international collaboration through ESA and the Max Planck Society. Its wide-field imaging capability is achieved by using established technology of the micro-pore lobster-eye X-ray focusing optics. Complementary to this is a deep X-ray follow-up capability enabled by two Wolter-I type X-ray telescopes. EP is also capable of fast transient alerts triggering and downlink, aiming at multi-wavelength follow-up observations by the world-wide community. Its scientific goals are mainly concerned with discovering new or rare types of transients, including tidal disruption events, supernova shock breakouts, high-redshift GRBs, and, of particular interest, electromagnetic sources of gravitational wave events.

ESA appointed Scientist

Through this AO, ESA will appoint one scientist to represent European scientific interests in the EP Science Team (EPST), in particular by serving on the EP Science Management Committee (SMC). The main responsibility of the ESA appointed scientist will be to advise ESA on the means to optimise the use of EP data by the general scientific community. In addition, the successful candidate will be expected to provide support to the communications activities of ESA.

The successful candidate will be appointed, ad personam, by the ESA Director of Science for an initial term of three years, which may be renewed.

Proposal Documentation

An invitation from the ESA Director of Science to respond to this Announcement of Opportunity can be found in the right-hand menu.

Full details of the appointment requirements and conditions, the contents and formats of the required Letter of Intent and the proposal, and the evaluation criteria are given in the AO document, available to download from the right-hand menu. Additional important information can be found in the Einstein Probe Science Management Document which is available to download from the right-hand menu.

Letter of Intent Submission

Letters of Intent, in PDF format, must be submitted using the Letter of Intent submission form linked below, before the deadline of 9 July 2021, 12:00 (noon) CEST.

Proposal Submission

Proposals, in PDF format, must be submitted using the proposal submission form linked below, before the deadline of 31 August 2021, 12:00 (noon) CEST.

Schedule

The schedule for this AO is given in the table below:

Contact

Last updated: 31 August 2021

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