RXTE Cycle 12!

[terri@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov]

RXTE Cycle 12 Plan and Schedule

We are pleased to report that, following the 2006 Senior Review of the
Astrophysics Division Mission Operations and Data Analysis (MO&DA)
Programs, the decision has been made to extend operations of the the
Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer mission for a further two years, through
February 2009. In this message we describe our plan for soliciting and
conducting the RXTE observing program during those additional years.

Since the future of RXTE was uncertain prior to the Senior Review,
no RXTE Guest Observer (GO) program information was included in
NASA’s “Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences
(ROSES-2006)”, released in January, 2006. Now that the RXTE
project has received direction to proceed, an Amendment to
ROSES-2006 is in preparation, describing the schedule for the
twelfth cycle of GO observations.

We expect to release this Amendment in Fall 2006, and anticipate
that RXTE Cycle 12 proposals will be due late January, 2007, with
the Peer Review in mid-April and the observing program released
in the May/June 2007 timeframe. Consistent with the direction we
have received from NASA HQ, we now expect Cycle 12 could be
the final call for RXTE observations. We thus intend to select sufficient
proposals in Cycle 12 to schedule observations through to a possible
February 2009 termination date. No Guest Observer funding is available
for Cycle 12, and thus budget proposals will not be solicited from
successful science PIs.

Although Cycle 11 observations will nominally end in March 2007,
the SOF has a comfortable margin of observing time "on the books",
to carry RXTE through to a later start for Cycle 12. If you have a
long-term monitoring campaign in effect for Cycle 11 and wish to
continue it, submit a Cycle 12 proposal. The SOF will schedule
additional time for your Cycle 11 monitoring campaign so
it will continue without a gap should your Cycle 12 follow-on
proposal be accepted.

RXTE Cycle 12 schedule

Notices of Intent Due: November 28, 2006
Proposals due: January 26, 2007
Peer Review: April 2007
Cycle 12 observations begin: late summer, 2007

As always, if you have any questions about the proposal process, please
feel free to contact the RXTE Guest Observer Facility by emailing your
questions to xtehelp@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov.




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