Announcement of Opportunity
for European Participating Scientist Membership
of the SCIENCE TEAM for the
X-ray Astronomy Recovery Mission (XARM)

6 March 2018

The purpose of this Announcement of Opportunity (AO) is to solicit proposals for membership of the X-ray Astronomy Recovery Mission (XARM) Science Team as Participating Scientists. This AO is open to scientists affiliated with institutes located in ESA Member States.

XARM is a JAXA mission with NASA and ESA participation, aiming at restoring the spectroscopic capabilities lost with the end of the Hitomi mission in March 2016.  The key scientific objective of XARM is "Pioneering a new horizon of the Universe with unprecedented high resolution X-ray spectroscopy".

Participating Scientists

To optimize the scientific utilisation of the mission, JAXA, NASA, and ESA will appoint a XARM Science Team. This team will primarily consist of scientists involved in the development of XARM together with a small number of external Participating Scientists. The total membership of the Science Team is expected to be around 100. The XARM Science Team is tasked to optimise the science output of XARM, particularly during the Performance Verification phase. XARM Participating Scientists will be members of the Science Team and will represent the broader astronomy community. They will provide scientific expertise complementary to that of the scientists involved with XARM mission development.

Through this AO ESA will select two Participating Scientists who will become Science Team members upon concurrence by JAXA. The ESA selected scientists will serve for a renewable term of three years, and possibly for the duration of the XARM Science Team activities.

Proposal Documentation

An invitation from the ESA Director of Science to respond to the ESA Announcement of Opportunity for European Participating Scientist Membership of the X-ray Astronomy Recovery Mission (XARM) Science Team can be found in the right hand menu.

Full details of the appointment requirements and conditions, the required contents of the Proposal, the evaluation criteria, and format of the proposals are given in the AO document, available to download from the right-hand menu.

Proposal Submission

Proposals in PDF format must be submitted using the submission form linked below, before the deadline of 6 April 2018, 12:00 (noon) CEST.

Schedule

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

Contact