NASA's $21 Million EPSCoR Basic Research Round Has Roughly a 50% Hit Rate — and You Can't Submit the Proposal Yourself

Academic PIs at universities in 28 EPSCoR jurisdictions have until February 1, 2027 to compete for one of just two proposal slots their jurisdiction gets under NASA's $21 million FY2027 EPSCoR Basic Research cooperative agreement notice, NNH27ZHA001C, posted to Grants.gov on October 30.

That sentence contains two facts that pull in opposite directions, and understanding the tension between them is the whole game here. The first is that this is, on paper, one of the best-odds federal research competitions a university researcher will see this winter. The second is that you are not the applicant, and the deadline that governs your life is not February 1.

A $21 million pool, 28 awards, and a ceiling of 56 proposals

The Grants.gov listing for opportunity 364188 carries the hard numbers, and NASA's Office of STEM Engagement issued the full Cooperative Agreement Notice on October 27 under Assistance Listing 43.016. NASA anticipates $21,000,000 over a three-year period, 28 awards, and an expected value of approximately $750,000 per award. Proposals are due February 1, 2027 at 11:59 PM Eastern via NSPIRES; the listing archives March 3, 2027. Anticipated award notification is July through September 2027, and the instrument is a cooperative agreement, not a grant — meaning NASA assigns a Technical Monitor to every award and stays substantively involved in the research.

Now do the arithmetic that NASA does not do for you. Eligibility is a limited competition restricted to 28 named jurisdictions: 25 states plus Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. The CAN states plainly that "only two proposals per jurisdiction shall be accepted." That caps the entire national applicant pool at 56 proposals, competing for 28 anticipated awards.

A nominal 50% selection rate is not a number that appears anywhere else in the federal research portfolio. NIH R01 success rates have hovered around one in five. Most NSF core programs land in the 20-to-30 percent band. If you have spent your career absorbing the base rates of investigator-initiated federal competitions, recalibrate: the hard part of NASA EPSCoR Basic Research is not the federal panel. It is getting your jurisdiction to pick you.

The EPSCoR director is the PI of record — you are the Science-I

This is the structural fact that trips up researchers coming from an NIH or NSF background, where you write the proposal, you submit it through your sponsored programs office, and your name sits in the PI field.

Under NNH27ZHA001C, "a jurisdiction's EPSCoR Director is considered the Principal Investigator (PI)." The director is responsible for proper conduct of the research, appropriate use of funds, and submission of scientific progress reports. The director is, in the CAN's words, "the administrator of the proposal." Your role is Science-Investigator — the person who actually manages the scientific and technical development and whose research idea the proposal is built around. The evaluation criteria make the division explicit: the EPSCoR Director "will not be assessed on their expertise in the specific proposed research area since the Science-PI is tasked with managing the scientific/technical development progress."

Proposals can only be accepted from institutions where a NASA EPSCoR Director currently serves, and every proposal must be submitted through that director's office. The CAN also obligates jurisdictions to make all institutions of higher education within the jurisdiction aware of the opportunity — so if you are at a regional comprehensive or a primarily undergraduate institution rather than the flagship that houses the EPSCoR office, you have a legitimate claim to a seat at the table, and the solicitation says so.

The operational consequence: February 1 is NASA's deadline, not yours. Your deadline is whatever internal pre-proposal or down-select date your jurisdiction's EPSCoR office sets, and those have been landing in the October-to-January window across state offices. Several jurisdictions ran pre-proposal calls months ago in anticipation of this CAN. If you have not contacted your EPSCoR director's office yet, that call is the single highest-value thing you can do this week.

Two slots this year because last year's competition never happened

The two-proposals-per-jurisdiction allowance is an anomaly, and the reason matters for how you position yourself.

NASA did not hold a Basic Research competition for FY2026. State EPSCoR offices in Louisiana and Montana both describe NASA forgoing the FY2026 solicitation and rolling forward into FY2027. The CAN itself leaves fingerprints of this: it tells jurisdiction directors they may use any proposal selection process at their discretion, "including but not limited to down selection processes originally intended for FY26 and FY27."

So two years of pent-up jurisdictional pipeline is flowing into one round. That is why there are two slots instead of the customary one, and it cuts both ways. The federal odds improve, but the internal competition inside your jurisdiction is deeper than a normal year — you may be competing against a proposal that already won a FY2026 down-select and has been sitting polished in a drawer. Louisiana's office expects the program to return to a normal competition cycle in FY2028, which means a jurisdiction that misses both slots this cycle is likely looking at a long wait.

The 50% match is where budgets quietly fall apart

Cost sharing is required at a level of at least 50% of requested NASA funds. A full $750,000 request therefore obligates $375,000 in non-federal commitment, making the real project budget roughly $1.125 million. Contributions may be cash or in-kind but must satisfy 2 CFR 200.306.

Four details in the fine print carry real money:

Do not over-match. The CAN states flatly that "no bonus points will be offered for cost share above the minimum requirement." Institutions routinely burn negotiating capital promising 75% or 100% matches that earn exactly zero additional score.

NASA's own contributions cannot count. Any NASA-funded or in-kind services from Mission Directorates, NASA Centers, or JPL must be labeled "NASA responsibilities" and are explicitly excluded from the 50% match. A proposal that counts a center collaborator's time toward the match is short by that amount.

Insular areas are exempt. Consistent with Controller Alert 23-04 and Public Law 96-205, the cost share is waived entirely for the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam.

EPSCoR funds cannot pay NASA people. Funds may not support civil servant or NASA contractor participation in the research. If you need a NASA-unique facility, you need a letter of support from the hosting center plus an explicit budget line with basis of estimate.

One tactical note NASA volunteers: investigators are encouraged to front-load equipment and instrumentation requests early in the award period, to maximize availability across the remaining years. Reviewers read a back-loaded equipment budget as a planning failure.

Thirty-five percent of your score depends on naming a NASA scientist

The scoring is 35% Relevance to NASA Research Focus Areas, 35% Intrinsic Merit, 15% Budget/Cost and Budget Narrative, and 15% Management and Evaluation.

The relevance criterion is not a boilerplate alignment paragraph. It requires that "the name(s) and title(s) of NASA researchers with whom the proposers will partner shall be included," along with a description of current or previous interactions, partnerships, and meetings with NASA researchers, engineers, and scientists in the proposed research area. Research Focus Areas are maintained at NASA's EPSCoR site rather than printed in the CAN, and proposals must describe the use of NASA content, people, or facilities in executing them.

Translated: a named, willing NASA collaborator is a prerequisite, not a nice-to-have, and securing one takes longer than writing the fifteen-page Scientific/Technical/Management plan. If you are starting cold, that outreach competes directly with your internal down-select timeline.

Two more eligibility traps worth flagging. First, no renewals or extensions of previous projects will be accepted, and existing EPSCoR awards that already demonstrate established partnerships among academia, government, business, and industry "shall not be submitted." This money is for new research directions, not continuation funding. Second, proposals involving bilateral participation, collaboration, or coordination with China or any Chinese-owned company — funded or on a no-exchange-of-funds basis — are ineligible for award.

Proposals go to a panel of NASA and other federal personnel, receive an overall rating from Excellent down to Poor, and in the event of a tie across the merit criteria, NASA gives preference to lower indirect cost rates. Awards must also comply with EO 14303 on Gold Standard Science, EO 14369 on space superiority, and EO 14332.

How this differs from the NSF money flowing to the same 28 jurisdictions

The same jurisdictions are the target of NSF's parallel EPSCoR investments, and the two programs fund genuinely different things. As we covered in our analysis of NSF's E-CORE program, which hands EPSCoR jurisdictions up to $10 million over four years, the NSF track builds the research machine — governance, shared instrumentation, administrative capacity, the apparatus that lets a jurisdiction compete.

NASA EPSCoR Basic Research funds the research itself, with a mandatory NASA partner and a mission-alignment requirement worth more than a third of the score. For a PI at an EPSCoR institution, these are complementary rather than competing: institutional capacity built with NSF E-CORE dollars is exactly the kind of documented research infrastructure that strengthens the "builds capacity in the jurisdiction" argument NASA requires, and institutional resources can legitimately appear in your 50% match.

Your next three weeks

Submission is NSPIRES-only — no hard copies — and your institution needs an active SAM.gov registration with a current UEI before anything can be submitted. Registration problems surface at the worst possible moment, so verify now rather than in late January.

The sequence that matters: contact your jurisdiction's NASA EPSCoR director this week and ask for the internal down-select deadline and process. Identify and email a specific NASA researcher in your focus area. Confirm with your dean or VPR where $375,000 in non-federal match will come from, in writing. Only then start the fifteen-page plan.

Search NASA and EPSCoR-eligible research opportunities on Granted to see what else is open to your institution this cycle: grantedai.com/grants?q=NASA EPSCoR. Program questions go to Dave Berger, EPSCoR Project Manager and selection official, at EPSCoR@nasaprs.com; NSPIRES technical problems go to the help desk at nspires-help@nasaprs.com or (202) 479-9376, weekdays 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM ET.