Application Procedure for the Keck 2018A Semester
Online Electronic Submission is required
All proposals should be sumbitted online following the instructions given below and adhering to the guidelines in the
call for proposals.
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Proposal Deadline:
All proposals for the 2018A semester and the relevant supporting letters must be received before
4 pm PDT, September 14, 2017.
This deadline is rigorously enforced.
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Mission Support Letters
for
general mission support
and
Key Strategic Mission Support (KSMS)
proposals must be requested from NASA HQ by August 31, two weeks before submission deadline.
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Non-binding, but required, letters of intent for the
Key Strategic Mission Support (KSMS)
projects are due Aug 16 and should be submitted to
KeckCFP@ipac.caltech.edu
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Proposal Guidelines:
All proposers should carefully read the
proposal guidelines
before writing their proposal. Proposals that do not include all information specified will have the omission(s) reflected in their TAC scores and, in some cases, be rejected outright.
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Frequently Asked Questions
are answered
here.
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Information for 2018A Proposals:
Below we outline the information for the general observing proposals. Note that proposals in support of NASA Space Missions (i.e. Key Strategic Mission Support and General Mission Support proposals) have a slightly different proposal contents as outlined
here.
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Electronic Submission:
Proposers should submit a PDF of their proposal using the
Online Proposal Submission Form.
The Online Proposal Submission Form includes:
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A text box for you to enter an abstract for your proposal. The abstract does not need to be repeated in the body of the proposal.
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A text box for you to state why public data already in the Keck Observatory Archive are insufficient to meet the science goals of the proposal. Please see the
call guidelines
for more information and instructions.
Shortly after the successful receipt of the proposal at NExScI, you will receive an email acknowledgement with an attached copy of the PDF submission as received at NExScI. Please email
KeckCFP@ipac.caltech.edu
if you do not receive the confirmation email or experience problems. Information on the NExScI cover page may be made public for accepted proposals.
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Evaluation and Notification:
NASA will follow the guidelines in the call for proposals in evaluating proposals and assigning observing time. Scientific justification and strategic importance will be the primary selection criteria, except in the case of mission support proposals, in which programmatic criteria may also be important. The review process will consist of a science review by the NASA Keck TAC and, possibly, by the WMKO staff for technical soundness. Final selection is made by the selecting official, the NExScI Executive Director, based upon the recommendations of the TAC. Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their applications in June or December as appropriate. Successful applicants will be notified as
early as possible and are strongly encouraged to set up communications with the WMKO technical staff and support astronomers. This will ensure that valuable Keck telescope time will be used efficiently from your first time on the telescope.
- Proposal Support:
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Subject to the availability of funds,
Principal Investigators of programs assigned time by the NASA Keck TAC will receive limited research and travel funding. Funding awards will be determined through formulaic means. Target of Opportunity proposals do not typically receive financial support since the observations may never be triggered. NExScI will manage the Keck PI Data Awards (KPDAs) and will contract with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to administer the disbursement of most of the funds. The funding instrument used by JPL will in most cases be a Research Support Agreement (RSA) depending on the size of the award and the PIs home institution. An RSA is a simple Fixed Price, Advance Paid, subcontract provided through JPL that is used for basic research funding where scientific reports and technical data are the only deliverables and can be awarded to educational and non-profit institutions. JPL is unable to issue grants.
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For KSMS teams, we anticipate funding up to $75K/year/team (depending on the number of allocated nights and the complexity of the proposed final data products) will to be available from NASA HQ to support the timely release of processed data in a form suitable for use by the broader community as a contributed dataset through the
Keck Observatory Archive (KOA).
Proposers should not include any budget information in the proposal, however successful KSMS proposers will be contacted by NASA Headquarters for detailed budget information.
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The only required reporting for RSAs is a final report outlining the work completed and any resulting publications. Using this
template
for your final report will ensure that all relevant information is included. Failure to submit a final report in a timely manner may be grounds for rejection of observing proposals or withholding of funding in subsequent years. Final reports can be
submitted online.
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Publications including NASA Keck time should include the acknowledgment found
here.
Notification of publications should be sent to
KeckCFP@ipac.caltech.edu
- Instrument Notes: All PIs are advised to consult the
Special Instrument Notes
provided on the Keck Observatory web site. Please note that Keck I and Keck II have different eastern and western telescope limits which affects the times that objects are available for observing. WMKO will not offer any visitor instruments during 2018A.
Web Curator NExScI Cognizant Official:
Dawn
Gelino