HST Call for Proposals and HST Primer for Cycle 24

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3.10	Mid-Cycle GO Proposals

Up to 200 orbits per cycle will be available for Mid-Cycle GO programs. Mid-Cycle programs were initiated in Cycle 23 to provide the community with an opportunity to propose for in-cycle observations of recently-discovered, non-transient objects. As such, they complement Director’s Discretionary programs, which target unexpected transient phenomena and time-critical observations.

Mid-Cycle GO Proposals must meet the following prime criteria:

1.	Proposers must provide an well-justified explanation of why the proposal could not have been submitted in response to the standard annual Call for Proposals: for example, the target source may have been identified subsequent to the most recent proposal deadline.

2.	Proposers must provide a clear description of the scientific urgency of these observations and why they should be executed in the present cycle.

Proposals should be submitted via the Astronomer’s Proposal Tool (APT) as type GO, using the Mid-Cycle template for the pdf attachment. Upon completion of your Mid-Cycle submission, your program will be transferred to the STScI for processing. If you run into problems submitting an Mid-Cycle Request, send mail to help@stsci.edu for investigation/resolution

Mid-Cycle proposals may be submitted at any time between August 15, 2016 and January 31, 2017; proposals submitted after February 1, 2017 will be held over for the Cycle 25 TAC review.

Proposals for Mid-Cycle time must be sufficiently detailed for adequate evaluation, comparable with proposals submitted for the regular observing cycles as described in the current Call for Proposals. Among other things,

•	Both the proposed observations and the use of Mid-Cycle time must be justified explicitly,

•	There must be an adequate description of how the proposed observations relate to the current state of knowledge,

•	And the proposed observations must be described in sufficient detail to allow technical evaluation.

Mid-Cycle GO proposals will have the following characteristics:

•	Proposals are limited to requesting no more than 5 orbits;

•	Observations should have minimal constraints to maximize scheduling flexibility;

•	Observations taken for accepted programs will have a proprietary period of no more than 3 months;

•	Proposals may request only HST time - joint proposals are not permitted;

•	Proposers may apply for all available instruments. Proposals must be compliant with the technical restrictions described in the most recent Call for Proposals.

Members of the STScI Science Policies Group will undertake an initial review of GO Mid-Cycle proposals to determine whether the proposals meet prime criterion #1. Proposals that do not meet that criterion will not be distributed for further review; the Principal Investigator will be informed of that decision, and is free to submit the proposal at the next standard cycle deadline. Re-submissions of rejected past cycle proposals will be rejected automatically.

Mid-Cycle proposals will receive scientific review by members of the community who have contributed to recent HST TAC reviews.