XMM-Newton Announcement of Opportunity: Policies and Procedures

6.2 Submission of Open Time Proposals

XMM-Newton proposals must be prepared using RPS provided by ESA. This tool checks for the formal correctness of the proposal's entries. It produces formatted text output in electronic form. Proposals in any other format will not be accepted.

For technical details and advice, please see on-line instructions:

http://xmmrps.esac.esa.int/

For each observation contained in the proposal, the total observation duration which includes the overheads of the instruments is considered by OTAC. In order to calculate this time, proposers have to enter the requested science exposure time of the scientific prime instrument and the prime instrument mode in the RPS.

Submission of a proposal is only complete if:

1. the validated RPS file of the proposal (i.e. the file produced by RPS when no formal errors are reported) is received before the deadline of the call and
2. the scientific justification is received before the deadline of the call.

In view of possible network congestion close to the deadline, proposers are urged to submit their proposals well in advance of the due date. Proposers will receive an e-mail acknowledgment confirming the receipt of their proposal(s) and providing the proposal number assigned after successful submission.