Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Cycle 1 General Investigator Program selections will be made through a competitive peer review process.

Peer Review

Proposals received by the submission deadline will be organized into topical science areas and assigned to Review Panels with members selected from the astronomical community. In order to minimize conflicts of interest there will be parallel panels for each topical science area. 

The evaluations of the Science Review Panels will be forwarded to a Time Allocation Committee (TAC), which will be comprised of a TAC Chair, the Panel Chairs, and several at-large members. The TAC will take the results of the Science Review Panels and provide a consolidated list of recommendations to the Roman Selection Official from the Project Science Office, who will then make the final selection of the Cycle 1 program.

Evaluation Criteria

The Science Review Panels and Time Allocation Committee will base their evaluations of proposals on the criteria listed in this section. The numbered criteria are listed in descending order of importance.

Proposals will be evaluated according to these criteria:

1. The overall scientific merit of the proposed investigation, its potential contribution to the advancement of scientific knowledge, and its potential for enabling new and important types of scientific investigations.
2. The extent to which the proposed investigation leverages the unique capabilities of Roman or demonstrates the relevance to Roman science.
3. Well-developed analysis and implementation plans describing how the scientific objectives will be realized and the results distributed to the community.
4. For proposals requesting new observations only: the technical feasibility of the proposed observations, and the extent to which the observations can be accommodated within routine Roman operations. Proposals should provide a compelling justification for why this survey should be executed in the first two years of the mission.

Proposal Selection

The Roman Science Review Panels and Time Allocation Committee are currently scheduled to conduct their peer reviews in May / June of 2026. The Roman SSC plans to announce the final selections in the summer of 2026 with Cycle 1 observations beginning in January 2027 (assuming a late September 2026 launch and three months of commissioning).

Review of Approved Programs

All the approved programs containing new observations will be assigned a Contact Scientist (from the SOC, SSC, or both, depending on the specifics of the program). The Contact Scientist(s) will review the program to ensure the APT program implementation is the most efficient to meet the science goals of the proposal while maximizing telescope schedulability and will work with the PI and/or the technical lead to resolve any schedule conflicts and / or implement any necessary changes or modifications.

Proposal Confidentiality

Proposals submitted in response to this Call for Proposals will be kept confidential to the extent allowed by the review process. For approved investigations only, the Roman SSC will make the titles, investigator names, and abstracts publicly available after the selections have been announced. The remainder of the approved proposals, and the entirety of proposals not selected, shall remain confidential.