cyan_blue when I reached Atlanta yesterday afternoon. I let go of it in the evening, as it was my brother Coby's birthday party and I've lost on lots of proposals before. At 2am there was an email from a co-investigator on my team, urging me to check the database as it looked like we were selected... and we were! A win! And for a large research grant, to essentially create over 4 years a Mars-analog rover mission with flight-mature astrobiology instruments, and take it to the Atacama Desert in Chile for testing. Our team colloquially called it "the 2024 brassboard" internally.
This particular proposal had been submitted twice before -- both times near-misses, it had been "selectable" but never funded. This time it made it past that threshold. And so I get to bring this team together and towards future Mars exploration, hopefully.
After the past year of rolling with various shocks, it is great to have a pleasant surprise!
