ROSES 2025: A.2 Earth Venture: TROPICS and PREFIRE Science and Applications Teams

The Earth Venture: TROPICS and PREFIRE Science and Applications Teams funding opportunity is part of NASA's Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES) initiative. NASA established the Earth Venture (EV) mission line to support low-cost, high-impact Earth science investigations. The Earth Venture program was originally recommended by the 2007 National Research Council’s Decadal Survey in Earth science and has been implemented to foster frequent, competitively selected flight missions. These missions aim to improve scientific understanding of the Earth system using innovative and often higher-risk technologies, offering essential contributions to climate science and Earth system monitoring. This particular program targets two EV-class missions: the Polar Radiant Energy in the Far InfraRed Experiment (PREFIRE) and the Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats (TROPICS). PREFIRE focuses on enhancing climate models by collecting spectrally resolved measurements of far-infrared (FIR) energy at Earth’s poles. Using two CubeSats launched in May and June 2024, PREFIRE captures FIR radiation that constitutes over 60% of the polar energy budget. The mission addresses critical gaps in knowledge regarding surface emissivity, atmospheric greenhouse effects, and polar energy fluxes, thereby enabling more accurate predictions of Arctic warming, sea ice loss, and sea-level rise. TROPICS, meanwhile, is a satellite constellation providing rapid-repeat passive microwave observations of tropical cyclones (TCs) and other tropical weather systems. The constellation includes several CubeSats launched between 2021 and 2023. TROPICS enhances current microwave observation capabilities by delivering measurements with a median revisit time of 60 minutes. It provides data for atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles and cloud ice imagery, supporting research on storm structure, intensity, and rapid changes in storm environments. The mission supports not only scientific analysis of tropical cyclones but also operational applications and integrative science using complementary satellite data. The ROSES A.2 element invites proposals for membership in the PREFIRE and/or TROPICS Science and Applications Teams. Funded teams will expand the scope of each mission by producing new data products, validating existing products, integrating PREFIRE or TROPICS data with other satellite datasets, and reducing uncertainties in climate models or weather prediction systems. Projects must directly leverage publicly available Level 1–3 PREFIRE or TROPICS data via NASA's Atmospheric Science Data Center or Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center. Proposals must also adhere to the dual-anonymous peer review process and be prepared in accordance with the Guidelines for Proposers to ROSES DAPR Programs. A two-step proposal process is used. Step-1 proposals, replacing the traditional Notice of Intent, are mandatory and must be submitted electronically via NSPIRES by the deadline listed in the ROSES-2025 tables. NASA will notify applicants if their Step-1 proposals are encouraged to proceed to Step-2. Regardless of encouragement, only those who submitted a Step-1 proposal are eligible to submit a full Step-2 proposal. Step-2 submissions undergo a full dual-anonymous peer review, must include a detailed Open Science and Data Management Plan, and follow specific formatting and anonymization guidelines. Step-2 proposals are due on the date specified in the ROSES-2025 tables and should reflect the same scientific objectives described in Step-1. NASA expects to fund 5–7 new awards each under the PREFIRE and TROPICS components, with an annual program budget of up to $1 million for each. Awards may last up to three years. Participation in annual in-person science team meetings (in Madison, WI for PREFIRE and Boston, MA for TROPICS) is expected and should be included in the proposal budget. Program points of contact are Wenying Su (wenying.su-1@nasa.gov, 757-690-3418) and Will McCarty (will.mccarty@nasa.gov, 240-758-8263).

Carefully follow anonymization protocols and refer to ROSES DAPR guidance.