NASA SPACE TECHNOLOGY MISSION DIRECTORATE NASA INNOVATIVE ADVANCED CONCEPTS PHASE II STUDIES NASA RESEARCH ANNOUNCEMENT 2013 | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase II Studies NASA Research Announcement (NRA) for 2013, issued by NASA Headquarters under the Space Technology Mission Directorate, sought proposals for follow-on studies of bold, far-term aerospace ideas that could fundamentally change what is possible in spaceflight or aeronautics. The opportunity was released as Funding Opportunity Number NNH13ZUA003N and posted May 21, 2013, with the full solicitation becoming available May 28, 2013 through the NSPIRES portal (NASA Research Opportunities) under the Open Solicitations menu. NIAC was positioned as a program specifically meant to explore visionary concepts at an early stage, emphasizing architectures, missions, and complete system-level ideas rather than incremental improvements. The core intent was to fund multiple Phase II studies that build on prior Phase I work and push concepts further in rigor, feasibility, and mission relevance while still allowing room for creative, high-risk thinking.

A central theme of the solicitation was that NIAC Phase II proposals needed to be exciting, unexplored, far term, and credible. In practical terms, that meant NASA was looking for ideas that could enable a "great leap" rather than a modest step forward, and that were not already well-trodden in mainstream development pathways. At the same time, the program made clear that even daring proposals had to be grounded in technical credibility and plausibly implementable engineering, not purely speculative or science-fiction narratives. The announcement explicitly ruled out proposals focused on narrow technology development, subsystem-only work, or near-term and incremental advances. The emphasis was on big-picture concepts where the study would examine the overall architecture, mission design, system performance, key challenges, and a believable path that could someday translate into real capability.

Eligibility was intentionally narrow in one respect and broad in another. It was narrow because only principal investigators or organizations that had already completed a successful NIAC Phase I study were allowed to apply, provided they had not yet completed a NIAC Phase II study. The solicitation also extended eligibility to participants from the earlier NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (the predecessor program) who had completed Phase I but not Phase II, except in cases where a Phase II effort was previously halted at the midterm review. Beyond that gating requirement, the eligible applicant pool was broad: proposers could be affiliated with universities, commercial companies, nonprofit organizations, research laboratories, government agencies, or NASA Centers, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The announcement also permitted individuals to submit proposals as long as they satisfied NSPIRES registration requirements.

Submission and administrative expectations were tied closely to NSPIRES, since proposals had to be submitted electronically through NASA's designated system. Any organization intending to submit needed to be registered in NSPIRES and must have its authorized organizational representative(s) identified to handle electronic submission. The solicitation cautioned that principal investigators and team members (such as co-investigators) also face system-specific registration requirements, and it encouraged applicants to start the registration and proposal-entry process well ahead of the deadline to avoid last-minute compliance or access issues. Proposal details such as evaluation criteria and specific submission instructions were to be provided in the NRA itself, but the public summary highlighted the major constraint that proposals were limited to no more than 20 pages.

The deadline for submission was on or before July 2, 2013 (Tuesday), and the opportunity was categorized as discretionary funding. The funding instruments listed for awards included grants and cooperative agreements, with the activity category described as science and technology and other research and development. There was no cost-sharing or matching requirement, and the CFDA listing was 43.009. As is common in federal research opportunities, the number of awards was not fixed and depended on the availability of appropriated funds, meaning selection decisions were contingent on the final budget environment.

For communication and support, the announcement directed scientific and programmatic questions to NIAC program representatives via hq-niac@mail.nasa.gov, and stated that responses would be provided by email and also added to a Frequently Asked Questions document associated with the solicitation on NSPIRES. It also noted that the anonymity of individuals and institutions submitting questions would be preserved in the public FAQ. For help accessing the announcement or dealing with system issues, contacts included John (Jay) Falker, PhD, at the NIAC email address, and NAIS Support at nais.support@nasa.gov. Overall, this 2013 NIAC Phase II solicitation functioned as a targeted continuation mechanism: it invited only proven Phase I NIAC concepts to compete for additional study funding, with the goal of maturing ambitious, system-level aerospace ideas into more credible, analytically supported visions that could one day shape future NASA missions or aeronautics breakthroughs.

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