The UK space science community made proposals for 14 space science experiments to PPARC in June 1999 as a response to its Announcement of Opportunity that had been timed to coincide with the NASA MIDEX selection process. Many of the proposals were however independent of this particular opportunity. One proposal was selected and funded and one was selected but to await funding in the SR2000 settlement.

HESSI

  HESSI is a NASA mission to study solar flares during solar maximum, due for launch in July 2000. The proposal was to support data analysis and software development for the operational and data analysis.

SETH

  This proposal was to build and miniaturise a novel instrument to search for homochirality on Mars, ie a property of biological molecules. The mission opportunity was a Russian Mars 2003 mission.

AXO

  UK scientists proposed to join with Danish scientists to study one of four proposed Danish missions to image the aurora by an X-ray imager and to study "sprites", the newly discovered lightning-like components of thunderstorms that connect to stratospheric chemistry.

MONS

  One of the other three Danish missions in the same competition, MONS was a mission to study solar-like oscillations in nearby stars that would reveal their internal structure for the first time, and the UK proposal was for the detector system.

ETD

  A gravitational wave technology demonstrator, that would be nationally funded by the UK, preparing for the ESA-NASA LISA mission in about 2010.

STEREO

  A novel proposal to NASA for two spacecraft to observe the Sun, and provide stereoscopic views of coronal mass ejections ie the components of the solar wind that affect Earth's space weather. The UK would provide the imaging camera. This proposal was partly successful, being approved, but awaiting the SR2000 settlement to confirm the major part of the funding.

SWIFT

  A proposal for the NASA MIDEX opportunity, for a satellite to detect gamma ray bursts and follow them up rapidly by X-ray and optical observations. The UK to provide key instrumentation. This was the immediately successful proposal.

EUROPA ORBITER

  NASA's Europa mission is approved to investigate Jupiter's satellite and its icy surface. The proposal was to add on a UK-built magnetometer that would reveal Europa's internal structure and the content of its deep ocean on which the icy surface floats.

DEBIE

  This was a technology development proposal to improve an instrument that had been selected to study the dust environment of the International Space Station.

AMS

  AMS is a magnetic spectrometer intended to study matter/anti-matter symmetry in the universe. The first version has been approved to fly on NASA's Space Shuttle, and a final version on the Space Station in 2005. The UK proposal was to participate in the Cerenkov detector system.

PLUTO-KUIPER EXPRESS AND SOLAR PROBE

  This proposal was to build two identical chemical dust analysers for these two approved NASA missions to compare the composition of dust in the solar system close to and far away from the Sun.

GLAST

  GLAST is an approved NASA mission for gamma ray astronomy. The UK team intended to partner Stanford University to make detectors for it.

MAGPIES

  This was for the UK to launch a pair of satellites to take the first 3D images of the Earth's magnetosphere for solar weather studies. It would work with NASA's IMAGE project.

26 June 2000