Because of the delay in Hubble’s servicing mission to May (from this past October), NASA is rapidly running out of science projects to do on the telescope. The proposals that they accepted for Cycle 16 are essentially complete, and they’ve done most every snapshot target that anyone asked for in the past two cycles.
To fill in the gap, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) put out a supplemental call for proposals with a ridiculously short turn around time (3 weeks!) requesting proposals that were either large (more than 75 orbits) or innovative/risky. They also looked at some Director’s Discretionary proposals to run in January, because they can’t review the new proposals fast enough to get them on the telescope in time.
The latest details are:
* NICMOS restart didn’t work, so 53 proposals are being held in reserve in case they can get the restart to work in February.
* 230 WFPC2 proposals requesting 14230 orbits and 989 SNAPs (12:1 and 4:1)
* 2 Director’s Discretionary proposals approved — one to image the Lockman Hole and another to do UV imaging of some of the SINGS galaxies
I’m pretty impressed that the community could get together that many proposals on such a short notice. The majority will probably be recycled from previous submissions, but certainly not all. Oversubscription rate is pretty high, so this is not an easy Cycle!
December 10th, 2008 at 11:14 am
This instrument is the crown jewel of NASA science. It’s appalling that NASA can’t get their act together to repair it.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Ah, this is cool. I’m always interested in risky proposals. They hardly ever work out, but when they do it is usually something cool and unexpected:). I understand why such proposals aren’t give more ’scope time, but it’s neat when a situation like this crops up so that they can be reconsidered.
December 10th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Jeff — The delay was in response to a very real problem with the satellite that they needed to figure out how to fix before the repair mission. NASA has actually done a tremendous job turning around the new repair plan to be ready by May. So, while the delay is unfortunate, NASA’s actually handling this quite well.
December 11th, 2008 at 12:57 am
Figures. Just when I finally have enough good targets that it’s not quite “small and risky”, but not so many that I can fill 75 orbits with _good_ targets… What about us prudent people?
So I went big anyway (80 orbits), extending to “halfway-decent” targets.