Proposals are due by 5PM PST 17 March 2008 and must be submitted to the Michelson Science Center in electronic (PDF, PS, or Word) format through the MSC on-line submission portal.

Q: Can a proposal contain funded investigators from multiple institutions and reasonably expect multiple contracts to be established within the first performance period (FY08)?

A: There is precedent for multiple contracts to be established associated with SIM solicitations.  There is no technical reason why a submitted proposal cannot call for support for investigators at multiple
institutions.  However, there can be only one PI, and the PI must approve the disbursement of funds to multiple institutions resulting from an award from this program.

Q:  I have another question about the Proposal, which may again impact the composition of the team: It is mentioned that individuals presently getting significant funding through the SIM Project may not propose. What does that 'significant' exactly mean? Likely this excludes PIs of Key Projects, and PIs in general. Does this apply to anyone included in a program funded by the SIM Project?

A:  By NASA instruction, selected external analysis teams must be "independent" of the existing SIM Science Team (both PI's and named Co-I's).  So anyone who is identified as any type of investigator (PI or Co-I) on any present SIM Science Investigation (e.g. http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/SIM/sim_team.cfm ) is ineligible to participate in this solicitation -- as either a PI or named Co-I.

Beyond that, any individual who has received more than 25% of their financial support over the past 12 months from a SIM-funded activity would be construed as having tangible SIM connections, and would not qualify as "independent". Participation by such individuals is strongly discouraged, but not explicitly prohibited.

Anyone in either of these two discouraged categories who wishes to participate in this simulation activity must do so through the auspices of the SIM Science Team.  Parties interested in working with the SIM Science Team in this analysis effort should contact Mike Shao (mshao@huey.jpl.nasa.gov) for information on how to participate.

Q:  Section 8 of the call is ambiguous about what supplementary documents are required when. Please define all "required institutionally required documents."

A:  Each sponsoring (i.e. PI's home) institution is different in the form and content of material required to establish contractual vehicles with an external funding agency (in this case JPL).  Clearly it is the PI's responsibility to comply with the policies and procedures for their institution -- including (but not limited to) filing any required and institutionally-endorsed budget forms.

Q:  What is the variable factor in the "may" in the sentence, "Required institutionally required documents ... may follow online submission...?" That is, can one supply ALL required documents electronically on 17 March? If not, what subset CAN be submitted?

A:  Due to external constraints there is a relatively short time to prepare and submit proposals in response to this solicitation.  With an eye toward the short preparation time we wanted to provide proposers with additional flexibility in preparing and submitting supporting information (such as official and/or institutionally-endorsed budget materials). 

Proposers must submit their primary proposal materials (i.e. items a, b, c, and d from section 7 of the solicitation) by the proposal submission deadline of 5pm PST 17 March 2008. 

Proposers may (at their option) submit supporting materials such as proposed statements of work and/or official/institutionally-endorsed budgets not later than 5pm PST Tuesday 25 March 2008.  Submission of such supporting material is encouraged as it will probably expedite establishing the funding contract for the selected teams, but is not required for (nor will it factor into) the proposal evaluation/selection process.


Q:  Because the parenthetical "(e.g. ...)" implies that the "official budget" is an institutional document required by 25 March, what distinguishes this budget from the budget in the cost proposal that will be supplied by selected teams, presumably at some time after 25 March?

A:  Please see the answer to the above question.  The "official" (institutionally-endorsed) budget is NOT required as part of the proposal process, but it (as well as any other document required by the PI's home institution) can optionally be submitted up to one week later -- again in the interests of expediting the contract establishment.


Q:  It would be useful to provide a detailed breakdown of exactly what documents are required when, in what form, and clearly defining any and all requirements on those documents, including formats, page limits, necessary endorsements, content, etc. I'm happy with loose boundaries, but where you feel some specification is really important, I hope you will be clear and unambiguous.

A:  The only items required as part of the proposal submission are detailed in section 7 of the solicitation (i.e. please see http://msc.caltech.edu/missions/SIMPQ/SIMCall/CallForExternalAst.html#_Toc191420999 ); these items must be submitted by the proposal submission deadline (17 March 2008).  We refer you to the solicitation material for all relevant information on formats, page limits, and content.

(In the interests of establishing contracts with successful teams quickly after the selection process) we encourage respondents to submit proposed statements of work, institutionally-endorsed budgets, and any other materials required by their home institutions in that next week (i.e. by 25 March).  In particular we defer to the policies of the PI's institution with regard to institutional endorsement of budgets, and authorization committing the institution to the proposed work.


Q: Can we assume that all simulated measurements will be normally distributed about the true, theoretical values with a standard deviation stated, if necessary, for each point? That is, can we assume there are no sources of systematic error in the data?

A: Yes, for simplicity the errors will be normally distributed with a constant standard deviation for each of the astrometric and RV simulated data sets.

There will be no systematic errors inserted in the simulated data (at least in the first phase of the experiments).  That is, it is assumed that in a real mission scenario, any residual systematic effects will
be noticed and removed before further analysis, so the simulated data sets will reflect this philosophy.

[Background: We have quantitative measurements of systematic 1/f noise that occurs prior to narrow angle chopping.  This noise becomes quasi-white after chopping between target and ref star.  The initial
data set will consist of single epoch separation measurements, representing ~1.5hr observations.  The 1/f noise systematic error is only observable in the ~30 second single star observations, not the differential angles.]


Q: Will the standard deviation be specified for each point? I don't understand the data specifications (t,x,y) and (t,v) on page 2, unless all data points have the same standard deviation.  I was expecting data of the form t,x,dx,y,dy) and (t,v,dv), where dx, dy, and dv are the standard deviations used as a parameter in the normal random deviate that generates x(t), y(t), and v(t) from the theoretical values. What is your understanding?

A: As in most experiments, it is likely that a real SIM dataset will have varying measurement uncertainties among the individual measurements. It is therefore our intention to specify the individual uncertainties for each simulated astrometric (and RV) measurement.  So our intentions are consistent with your expectations in this regard.

That said, in the context of (at least the first phase of) this demonstration all the synthetic astrometric (and RV) measurements will have the +same+ noise statistics, and thus have the same standard
deviation value.

Q: I question adding second-order contributions like parallax and proper motion to the astrometry measurements. Does this test anything useful on the short timescales involved? Catanzarite et all didn't include it ("In these initial simulations, we did not account for the effects of parallax and proper motion.") If there is a reason to include such observer centric effects in the future, then won't you leave them out of the early stages, and add them in only when the value is clear?

A: You are of course correct that parallax and proper motion have often been ignored in studies of astrometric companion detection and characterization.  However, as first suggested by Black & Scargle
1982, we believe this is a significant omission that should be corrected in this simulation effort.  So the purpose of including parallax and proper motion will be to demonstrate that these effects can indeed be separated from the data without significant harm to the extraction of exoplanet parameters.  Specifically we wish to demonstrate the extraction of short-period (similar to 1 yr) planetary signatures in the presence of comparable-period parallactic effects, as well as additional outer-planet signatures in the target systems.

However we will provide the RV data in barycentric coordinates, since this is a very well understood effect, with essentially no contamination of the reflex motion signature, and it is routine to
express RV data this way.

Last Updated:
  14 Mar 2008