Physical Sciences Informatics (PSI)

Request for Proposals

PSI Solicitation

The next solicitation will be announced later this year. On June 28, 2024, five proposals were selected for funding.

In line with PSI goals to accelerate research and discovery through open access data, the Biological and Physical Science (BPS) division at NASA HQ annually announces a request for proposals for the 6 research areas and provides funding opportunity for researchers to conduct investigations using data available in PSI.

Upcoming Solicitation
Two photos put together. on the left: Female astronaut wearing glasses floats in the International Space Station while working to upgrade the Cold Atom Lab hardware using multiple laptops. On the right: Two men collaborate in a physics laboratory, engaged in scientific research.
Astronaut Christina Koch assists with a hardware upgrade for NASA's Cold Atom Lab aboard the International Space Station in January 2020.
JPL

Proposal Selection

  • The image shows two black-and-white microscopic views of a material's surface, with each view spanning 10 micrometers. The left image, labeled "1g" and the right image, labeled "µg," depicts the material in microgravity, showing a more structured formation.

    NASA Selects 5 Proposals to Conduct Research

    The five investigators will use data contained in the NASA’s Physical Sciences Informatics (PSI) system and build on prior reduced-gravity research to advance fundamental and applied research in the physical sciences.

What is PSI

The Physical Sciences Informatics (PSI) is an online database of completed physical science reduced-gravity flight experiments conducted on the International Space Station (ISS), Space Shuttle, Free Flyers, or commercial cargo flights, and of related ground-based studies. It includes experimental data from the following six research areas: 1) Biophysics, 2) Combustion Science, 3) Complex Fluids/Soft Matter, 4) Fluid Physics, 5) Fundamental Physics, and 6) Materials Science. Each research area is represented through a variety of data types, including raw and analyzed data, imagery, science requirements, experiment design and engineering data, analytical and numerical models, publications, reports, patents, and commercial products developed from the research.

The goals of PSI are to: a) promote investigations making use of currently available experimental data resulting in more scientists participating in reduced-gravity research; b) allow new areas of research and discovery to occur more quickly through open access; and c) accelerate the "research to product or publication" timeline through the rapid sharing of data. The PSI system allows researchers access to the detailed experimental data obtained from flight research conducted as part of NASA's Physical Sciences Research Program. In line with NASA’s commitment to fostering an inclusive open science community, PSI serves as an Open Science Data Repository (OSDR). NASA’s Biological and Physical Science (BPS) division releases an annual call for proposals soliciting ground-based research proposals to utilize the experimental data in the PSI system. To receive solicitation release notifications, subscribe to the Physical Sciences research program announcements in NSPIRES.

Learn More about PSI
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