NASA Announcement of Opportunity for a DRAFT Third Stand Alone Missions of Opportunity Notice (SALMON-3) Program Element Appendix (PEA) for a Small Complete Mission of Opportunity: Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) for Communit

On approximately January 19, 2018, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will be releasing a draft Third Stand Alone Missions of Opportunity Notice (SALMON-3) Program Element Appendix (PEA) Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for community comments. Comments, via email to the point of contact below, are due by March 14, 2018. Upon the release date, the full text of the draft solicitation will be available at NSPIRES (http://nspires.nasaprs.com/). SALMON-3 is an omnibus NASA Announcement of Opportunity. The SALMON-3 AO provides a solicitation and procurement base for modest investigations, also referred to as Missions of Opportunity (MO), requiring space flight that advance the high priority science, exploration, and technology objectives of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, and the Space Technology Mission Directorate. This release of SALMON-3 PEA includes a proposal opportunity for a Small Complete Mission of Opportunity for Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx). This Draft SALMON-3 PEA describes the requirements for Small Complete Mission of Opportunity proposal opportunities and documents specific requirements for SIMPLEx. Through this PEA, NASA Science Mission Directorate, Planetary Science Division (SMD/PSD), solicits investigations in which a secondary payload small spacecraft is built and launched with a primary spacecraft mission, followed by production of high quality and highly useful science data from that SmallSat, analysis of the data and publication of scientific results, and delivery of the data to an appropriate NASA archive. Participation will be open to all categories of organizations (U.S. and non-U.S.), including educational institutions, industry, not-for-profit organizations, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, NASA Centers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and other Government agencies. However, for PEA I, only U.S. organizations are eligible to propose as the sole or lead organization. Non-U.S. organizations may participate as non-lead organizations collaborating with U.S. leads. The comment period for the Draft 2018 SALMON-3 PEA ends on March 14, 2018. Comments on the draft may be addressed by email to SIMPLEx Program Scientist: Ms. Doris Daou, Email: [email protected] (subject line to read "SIMPLEx Draft AO"). Responses to all inquiries will be answered by email and also posted at the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) location of the SIMPLEx Program Acquisition website listed above; anonymity of persons/institutions who submit questions will be preserved.