Astronomers from around the world met last week to review the latest crop of research proposals for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). They sifted through 1,931 submissions — the most ever received for any telescope in history — and ranked them. By the time the reviewers begin releasing their decisions in late February, only one in every nine proposals will have been allotted time to collect data with JWST.
he huge demand is an indicator of the space observatory’s immense success: it has wowed astronomers by spotting some of the earliest galaxies ever seen and has uncovered more black holes in the distant Universe than was predicted. Launched in December 2021, it is the hottest property in astronomy. But oversubscription leaves many sound research projects in limbo.
“The overwhelming majority of submitted JWST proposals are very good, totally worth doing, absolutely should be done if time allows,” says Grant Tremblay, an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “But most of them will be rejected.”
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