FY 1998 MITM Program

Letters announcing the results of the competition for new Fiscal Year (FY) 1998 awards
from the Suborbital Program in Magnetospheric, Ionospheric, Thermospheric, and
Mesospheric (MITM) Physics were mailed to Principal Investigators on January 26, 1998.

These awards were made on the basis of proposals submitted in response to NASA
Research Announcement (NRA)-97-OSS-08. Proposals describing 23 investigations were
reviewed in the competition forFY 1998 funding from the MITM program. Seven of these
were rated Excellent or Excellent/Very Good in a peer review of their scientific merit, 5
were rated Very Good or Very Good/Good, and the reminder were rated Good or less.
The total FY 1998 funding requested was $5.6 M and the funding available for competition
was $2.0 M. The funding available allowed the selection of 8 efforts for initiation in
FY 1998. The selection was based on a combination of scientific and programmatic
grounds and included all of the Excellent proposals and the highest priority Very Good
proposal.

The assignment of ratings was based on requirements set out in the NRA and followed
carefully the NASA definitions of Excellent, Very Good, Good, and Poor which were
provided to proposers. Specifically, in order for a proposal to be have been rated Very
Good or Excellent it had to have (1) presented a clear scientific question to be answered,
(2) outlined an appropriate and feasible method of approaching this question and (3)
provided confidence that if the proposed effort were carried out, then definitive progress in
understanding the phenomenon in question would likely result. A proposal was classified
as Excellent if and only if, having met these necessary but not sufficient conditions, it also
targeted a compelling question whose timely solution was important to advancement of the
field.

The next opportunity to propose for MITM funding will be in response the 1998 Research
Opportunities in Space Science (ROSS) NRA, which we expect to release on or about
February 5, 1998. Following its release, the this NRA will be available at
<http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/oss/research/open.htm>. The ROSS NRA will solicit
proposals for a wide variety ofOffice of Space Science program elements, including all of
the traditional Sun-Earth Connection Supporting Research and Technology Programs. It
is expected that proposals to the MITM program will be due early in August.

A full list of the MITM investigations which are being supportedin FY 1998, including the
new starts, follows.