Hubble Space Telescope Call for Proposals for Cycle 11

3.6 Innovative Proposals

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STScI encourages programs that use the Observatory in innovative ways and that have the potential for enabling new scientific investigations of considerable promise and importance. It has therefore created the category of Innovative Proposals. The Cycle 11 review panels and TAC will award up to 100 orbits (from a separate pool) to such proposals.

An Innovative Proposal should push the envelope of what is technically feasible with HST. The observations might be risky, in that they may not be guaranteed to achieve the intended scientific performance level, but they should not pose a health and safety risk to the Observatory. The observations should aim at achieving a capability or level of performance that surpasses that specified as routine or default in the Instrument Handbooks.

A proposal that addresses new and original scientific questions using an observational approach that is already well established should NOT be flagged as an Innovative Proposal.

A primary criterion for Innovative Proposals is the potential for opening up new avenues of observation with HST that will enable new and important types of scientific investigations. In particular, it is not sufficient for an Innovative Proposal to merely make clever new use of the observatory, if it is not made clear how this may (ultimately) lead to high-quality scientific results. The resources needed at STScI to implement Innovative Programs will be considered as an additional criterion.

Possible examples of innovative programs are 8115, 8438, 9055, 9058, 9066, 9096, and 9171; the latter 5 of this list were approved in the innovative category in Cycle 10. Information on these proposals is available from the HST Program Information Web Page.

Innovative Proposals must be identified with the `innovative' keyword in the `Special Proposal Types' section of the proposal (see Section 8.11), and must describe in the `Scientific Justification' section of the proposal (see Section 8.15) why the proposal is innovative.