Still working on an
NASA and The Space Telescope Science Institute
announce a Supplemental Call for Observing Proposals for the
Hubble Space Telescope.
Told you so.
"A serious electronic malfunction on HST in late September led to
the postponement of Servicing Mission 4 (SM4). HST has been
restored to operations, and we anticipate exhausting the pool of
both existing Cycle 16 programs and Cycle 17 observations that
can be brought forward before SM4 occurs. We are therefore issuing
this call for supplementary programs using Wide-Field Planetary
Camera 2 (WFPC2), the Advanced Camera for Surveys Solar Blind
Channel (ACS/SBC), the Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object
Spectrometer (NICMOS) and the Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS) to
ensure that HST remains fully productive scientifically over this period.
This solicitation for proposals will be open through Monday December 8,
2008 11:59pm EST...
Results of the selection will be announced no
later than January 13, 2009.
We anticipate allocating 1,000 to 1,200 orbits for an SM4 launch in the
April/May timeframe. If SM4 is scheduled at a later date, the allocation will
be increased accordingly.
Full details are given at this web site:
http://www.stsci.edu/hst/proposing/docs/cycle16supplement"
3 weeks to write it up.
Better get hustling y'all.
Physical Science
Comments
This was the part that surprised me: "We intend to fund these programs at levels comparable to GO and SNAP programs seleted during a standard cycle, to the extent that NASA funding permits. Successful PIs will be informed of the schedule for budget submission for review by the Financial Review Committee."
Posted by: Caryl | November 18, 2008 10:52 AM
I thought that was a nice surprise.
Posted by: Steinn Sigurdsson | November 18, 2008 11:02 PM
Given the circumstances, we are facing a compressed schedule: the current programs carry us through to late January, so we need new programs selected by mid-January, so we have the Phase II programs in hand by February 2009. In brief, we are limiting the call to large(>75 orbit/target) and/or innovative GO and SNAP programs, with a Phase I deadline of December 8th. We will not have a face-to-face TAC meeting. Rather, we will distribute the proposals electronically, identify a subset of the TAC as reviewers for each proposal and ask that comments and grades are submitted via the web-based tool used in the Cycle 17 reviews. Our goal is to recruit at least 20 scientists for the TAC, and limit each member to providing preliminary grades for ~25 proposals.
The deadline for preliminary grades is December 19th. We will make an initial selection based on those grades, and circulate the results (clearly, we will avoid burdening TAC members over the holiday period!). If necessary, we will schedule a telecon early in January 2009 to refine the relative priorities; as usual, this will be more important for proposals in the grey area near the selection line than for highly ranked programs.
Posted by: Prospective Reviewer | November 20, 2008 11:02 PM
Thank you, most useful.
Posted by: Steinn Sigurdsson | November 20, 2008 11:52 PM