NASA opens Geosphere research opportunity with mandatory November notice deadline

NASA announced a new Geosphere research opportunity on October 2, inviting proposals on hazards and processes affecting Earth’s surface and interior. Researchers seeking to apply must submit a notice of intent by November 16, 2026, before the January 15, 2027 proposal deadline. NASA says it will return proposals filed without an on-time notice without review.

The opportunity, A.18 Geosphere, is part of NASA’s Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences 2025 solicitation, known as ROSES-2025. NASA’s solicitation system lists the Geosphere element as released on October 2. The announcement opens a competition for proposed research; it does not report selected projects or results from that research.

What NASA’s Geosphere call seeks

NASA identifies four areas that proposals may address, individually or in combination: forecasting geohazards and assessing their effects; connections between resource extraction and deformation; the distribution of critical mineral deposits and their relationship to crustal processes; and the movement of energy from Earth’s core toward its surface. Those areas cover both natural processes and changes associated with human activity.

For hazard research, NASA encourages proposals that examine how one event can set off another. Its examples include earthquakes triggering tsunamis or landslides. Possible forecasting studies include analysis of volcanic deformation and monitoring or modeling of activity before earthquakes. NASA says proposals assessing effects on infrastructure or populations should connect their analysis to societal impacts.

The fourth area concerns energy moving from deep within Earth toward the surface. NASA encourages proposals that connect observations or models of that flow with a deeper understanding of volcanic plumes and geochemical tracers. The announcement describes subjects for applicants to investigate, rather than findings that the agency says have already been established by this call.

Why land deformation and hazard forecasting matter

NASA describes its wider Geosphere research as the study of Earth’s core, mantle, crust and surface. The program uses measurements including radar, satellite positioning, lidar, gravity and optical or thermal observations. NASA says its work on crustal dynamics examines land deformation driven by processes such as tectonics and subsurface fluid flow, with applications to assessing and forecasting hazards.

The U.S. Geological Survey’s work provides context for the extraction and hazard questions in NASA’s call. USGS says it places seismometers in areas of increased earthquake activity, estimates hazards and uses numerical models to study induced earthquakes. Its simulations examine physical relationships between underground fluid injection or extraction and earthquakes, relationships that observations alone can study only indirectly.

USGS also reports that it released induced-earthquake hazard models in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Those models forecast the expected strength and frequency of shaking over a one-year period, based mainly on earthquake data from the previous year. That earlier work illustrates an existing approach to hazard forecasting; NASA’s new opportunity does not claim that proposed research has improved those forecasts.

Notice and proposal deadlines for A.18 Geosphere

NASA sets November 16, 2026, as the deadline for mandatory notices of intent and January 15, 2027, as the deadline for proposals. The notice is a required step: NASA says any proposal without a timely notice will be returned without review. The agency names Thorsten Markus as its contact for questions about A.18 Geosphere.

NASA’s public announcement does not give an award budget, an expected number of awards or an individual award size. It also does not set out detailed eligibility rules for this element. Prospective applicants therefore need the full solicitation terms to establish whether they qualify and what a proposal must contain. For now, the confirmed development is the opening of a research opportunity with four stated themes and two firm submission dates.