NICER observation list: Target ID 261201

During Cycle 1, the two stars in Eta Car, the superluminous, long-period, highly eccentric colliding-wind binary system will go through periastron passage. The X-ray emission will increase by about a factor of four then plunge to a minimum near inferior conjunction of the primary star. \nicer\ monitoring spectrometry (80 ksec total) is critical to measure variations in X-ray emission measure and column densities to measure changes in the shocked and un-shocked stellar winds as a function of orbital phase and time, and to help constrain the mechanism which causes X-ray flaring seen in previous cycles. These monitoring observations will also provide context our four high-resolution Chandra grating observations which will occur during the Cycle 1 interval.