Announcement of Opportunity
for Community Scientists
in the PLATO mission

11 April 2018

The purpose of this Announcement of Opportunity (AO) is to solicit proposals for Community Scientists in the PLATO mission. This AO is open to scientists affiliated with institutes located in ESA Member States. Scientists involved in the PLATO Mission Consortium management (programmatic, scientific, or technical) or who are responsible for hardware or software development and procurement activities are not eligible to apply.

PLATO aims at finding and studying a large number of extrasolar planetary systems, with emphasis on the properties of terrestrial planets in the habitable zone around solar-like stars. By determining the bulk properties of exoplanets, PLATO provides the means to explore the diversity of planets which in turns yields constraints on planet formation models. The mission objectives also include the investigation of seismic activity in stars, enabling precise characterisation of a planet's host star, including its age.

Community Scientists

Through this AO ESA will appoint up to two Community Scientists who will join the PLATO Science Working Team. The main responsibility of the Community Scientists will be to advise ESA on the means to optimise the use of PLATO data by the general scientific community. This includes looking after the interests of the scientific community involved in the PLATO complementary science programmes. In addition, the Community Scientists will be expected to provide support to the communications activities of ESA.

The successful candidates 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 PLATO Science Management Plan and the Definition Study Report, both of which are 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 26 April 2018, 12:00 (noon) CEST.

Proposal Submission

Proposals, in PDF format, must be submitted using the proposal submission form linked below, before the deadline of 23 May 2018, 12:00 (noon) CEST.

Schedule

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

Contact