We are delighted to announce a new Request for Proposals (RFP) for our Science and Technology Publicly Funded (STEP) grants. These grants are planetary science and/or technology grants chosen through an open, international, and competitive proposal process. Proposals may request funding for a variety of types of science and/or technology projects. Proposals must fit within one or more of The Planetary Society’s core undertakings (Explore Worlds, Find Life, Defend Earth) and must be consistent with The Planetary Society’s 2019-2023 Strategic Framework.
Proposers must submit preliminary proposals (pre-proposals) by 11:59 p.m. UT (4:59 p.m. PDT) on August 17, 2022. Based on pre-proposal submissions, a small number of proposers will be invited to submit full proposals from which grant selections will be made.
Throughout its history, through crowdfunding from its members and donors, The Planetary Society has supported science and technology projects to enable members/donors to play an active role in space exploration while enabling advances in science and technology. /or space technologies. .
STEP grants were created to regularly compete with a significant portion of The Planetary Society’s science and technology portfolio. This is the second STEP grant competition. In the first, 38 pre-proposals were submitted. Six of them were invited to submit full proposals. Among the highly competitive proposals, two proposals were selected for funding. The two winning projects were a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) radio citizen science project from UCLA in the United States, and a planetary defense project to use a new technique to study near-Earth asteroids from the University of Belgrade. in Serbia.
See the 2022 STEP Grants Request for Proposals for more details on the 2022 STEP Grants competition, including how to submit a pre-proposal.
We are grateful to the Halıcıoğlu Family Foundation for their generous support in the development and implementation of the STEP grant program. We also thank all of our members who funded our science and technology projects long before the term crowdfunding was coined.
