Page History

Background

The concept of Multi-cycle Treasury (MCT) programs was developed as a mechanism to allow the HST community to address high impact science questions that require observations on a scale that cannot be supported by the standard time allocation process. MCT programs were defined as GO programs that required at least 450 orbits. There was no restriction or pre-selection of science topics. Up to 500 GO orbits together with 250 orbits of Director's Discretionary time were made available for these programs in each of cycle 17, 18 and 19. Following  highly successful Servicing Mission 4, the Call for MCT proposals was issued in August 2009. A total of 39 proposals were received and reviewed by a dedicated Telescope Allocation Committee that met in January 2010. Based on the TAC recommendations, the STScI Director, Matt Mountain, approved three programs:

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