NASA ROSES-2025 Opens $300K Earth Science Awards for Early-Career PIs — NOIs Due May 18

NASA's Early Career Investigator Program in Earth Science — solicitation NNH25ZDA001N-ECIPES under the ROSES-2025 omnibus — is now accepting proposals from junior academic PIs, with mandatory notices of intent due May 18, 2026, and awards averaging $100,000 per year for up to three years.

What ROSES-2025 A.11 Puts on the Table

Released as Amendment 53 to the ROSES-2025 omnibus solicitation, element A.11 — formally titled the Early Career Investigator Program in Earth Science, or ECIP-ES — offers up to three years of funding at roughly $100,000 per year. That puts the ceiling for a full-term award at approximately $300,000, subject to satisfactory progress and the availability of appropriated funds.

The numbers are modest by federal research standards. An NSF CAREER award or DOE Early Career grant can reach five to six times that amount. But ECIP-ES is not trying to fund an entire lab program. It is designed to give recently minted PhDs a focused runway to conduct independent research, publish in Earth system science, and build the preliminary results that will underpin larger proposals down the road. For a postdoc transitioning to a faculty position, or an assistant professor assembling a first research group, $300,000 of unrestricted NASA funding over three years can be the difference between a viable research trajectory and an unfunded idea.

The program was formerly called the New (Early Career) Investigator Program in Earth Science, or NIP. NASA renamed it to ECIP-ES, but the structure and intent remain the same: identify promising early-career Earth scientists and give them enough support to establish competitive, independent research programs.

Who Qualifies — and Who Doesn't

Eligibility is precise. The principal investigator must hold a PhD conferred on or after January 1, 2017 — a rolling nine-year window from the proposal deadline. Candidates must have completed their doctoral defense before June 17, 2026. There are no exceptions for ABD candidates.

NASA does make allowances for career interruptions. Researchers who are more than nine years post-PhD may still apply if their career was interrupted by military service, family leave, serious health conditions, or other documented circumstances. The solicitation does not specify a maximum extension, but applicants in this situation should contact the program officers — Yaítza Luna-Cruz (yaitza.luna-cruz@nasa.gov) or Cynthia Hall (cynthia.r.hall@nasa.gov) — before investing time in a proposal.

The program targets researchers at U.S. institutions, consistent with standard ROSES eligibility. It is open to scientists across the full breadth of Earth system science, not limited to a particular subdiscipline or mission.

One feature worth flagging for first-time NASA proposers: ROSES solicitations operate through the NASA Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System (NSPIRES), not through Grants.gov submissions. The opportunity is listed on Grants.gov — that is the primary source linked above — but the actual proposal submission goes through NSPIRES. If you do not have an NSPIRES account, create one now. The registration process can take several business days, and waiting until mid-May to set one up is a common and entirely avoidable failure mode.

The Research Landscape: Earth Science to Action

ECIP-ES proposals must align with NASA's Earth Science to Action strategy — the framework governing how the agency connects satellite observations, airborne campaigns, and modeling capabilities to societal outcomes. This is not a rubber-stamp alignment exercise. Reviewers will look for proposals that demonstrate a genuine connection between the proposed investigation and actionable Earth science.

In practice, competitive proposals tend to fall into several categories:

Remote sensing applications. NASA's comparative advantage is its fleet of Earth-observing satellites and its airborne science program. Proposals that develop new methods for extracting scientific insight from satellite or airborne data — especially from newer missions like PACE, NISAR, or the upcoming Earth System Observatory — align naturally with the agency's investment priorities.

Data integration and modeling. Proposals that combine remote sensing data with ground-based observations, atmospheric measurements, or process-based models are well-positioned. NASA has invested heavily in open data infrastructure through programs like the Distributed Active Archive Centers, and reviewers respond well to proposals that leverage these investments.

Actionable science. The "to Action" component of the strategy is not decorative. NASA is increasingly focused on research that delivers usable products — wildfire risk maps, agricultural drought indicators, air quality forecasts, coastal inundation models. Early-career researchers who can articulate how their work will be used beyond the journal article have an edge.

Earth system interactions. Cross-disciplinary proposals addressing connections between atmosphere, ocean, land, and cryosphere processes are historically competitive. Single-variable studies have their place, but ECIP-ES reviewers tend to reward researchers who frame their work within the broader Earth system context.

Two Deadlines, Two Information Sessions

The calendar for A.11 is tight:

• May 14, 2026, 12:00 PM ET — First virtual informational session
• May 18, 2026 — Mandatory Notice of Intent due
• May 26, 2026, 1:00 PM ET — Second virtual informational session
• June 17, 2026 — Full proposals due

The Notice of Intent is mandatory, not optional. If you do not file an NOI by May 18, you cannot submit a proposal on June 17. This is a hard gate, and NASA enforces it without exceptions.

Both informational sessions are worth attending even if you have submitted ROSES proposals before. Program officers use these sessions to signal current priorities, answer scope questions, and clarify ambiguities in the solicitation text that may not be resolved until the Q&A. The sessions also give you a chance to hear what other proposers are asking, which can inform your own strategic positioning.

The thirty-day window between NOI and proposal deadline is shorter than many early-career researchers expect. If you are seriously considering a submission, start drafting now. A competitive ECIP-ES proposal requires a clear research narrative, budget justification, biographical sketch, current and pending support documentation, and a data management plan. Most of these components take longer to assemble than to write.

How ECIP-ES Fits the Early-Career Funding Landscape

ECIP-ES does not exist in isolation. Junior researchers in Earth and environmental sciences have several competing — and complementary — options.

The NSF CAREER Award remains the gold standard for early-career faculty in NSF-covered disciplines, with awards typically running $400,000–$800,000 over five years. But CAREER proposals require a significant broader impacts component, and success rates hover around 15–25 percent depending on the directorate.

The DOE Early Career Research Program recently opened its FY2026 cycle with $145 million and five-year awards up to $2.75 million for national lab scientists. The DOE program covers energy and computational sciences — different turf from ECIP-ES, but there is genuine overlap in areas like Earth system modeling and environmental research.

The NASA FINESST program (Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology) funds graduate students, not PIs. If you have a promising PhD student who needs support, FINESST and ECIP-ES can complement each other within the same research group.

ECIP-ES's smaller award size is actually a strategic advantage for certain applicants. The lower budget means you do not need to propose a sprawling multi-investigator effort or a major equipment purchase. A well-designed, tightly scoped single-PI investigation — the kind of project that early-career researchers can realistically execute — is exactly what the program is designed to fund.

What Historically Competitive Proposals Look Like

NASA's Earth Science Division has run this program since 1996 and supported 103 investigators in the 2017–2023 window alone. That track record provides a substantial body of precedent for what works.

Funded proposals typically share several characteristics. They propose a specific, answerable research question — not a broad theme. They connect to at least one active or planned NASA mission. They demonstrate that the PI has the technical skills and institutional support to execute the work. And they articulate why the proposed investigation requires NASA data, infrastructure, or expertise rather than support from another agency.

One common mistake: proposing research that is fundamentally an NSF project dressed in NASA language. Reviewers know the difference. If your investigation could be conducted entirely with ground-based data and has no meaningful connection to NASA's observation capabilities, ECIP-ES is probably not the right mechanism. Conversely, if your work genuinely depends on NASA's Earth observation infrastructure, make that dependence explicit and central to the proposal narrative.

Start Before the NOI Window Closes

Notices of Intent are due in less than a month. If you are a recently credentialed Earth scientist at a U.S. institution and your research connects to NASA's observing systems, this program was built for you.

Start by reading the full solicitation text on Grants.gov and registering on NSPIRES if you have not already. Then attend the May 14 informational session to hear directly from the program officers.

To find related NASA Earth science solicitations — including other ROSES-2025 elements that may fund complementary work — search active NASA Earth science opportunities on Granted. For broader guidance on positioning early-career proposals across federal agencies, explore Granted's research funding resources.

The mandatory NOI deadline is May 18. Thirty days is not a lot of time, but it is enough — if you start now.