Electronic submission of HST Phase I proposals
Brett S. Blacker, Glenn E. Miller, Claudia Megan Urry, Harry E. Payne, Drew J. Asson · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1998
As institutions and observatories are required to handle more tasks with fewer resources, the need to assist or automate some of the processing becomes crucial. One of the easiest tasks to automate is the front-end process of requesting to use the telescope. Proposing for Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observing time and archival research proceeds to two phases: in Phase I, the scientific merits of the proposal are considered, and only accepted proposals enter Phase II, where the observations are specified in complete detail. The HST Phase I process includes obtaining, completing, and submitting proposal forms. The automation includes making the proposal forms available, and allowing them to be submitted electronically. By providing a standard proposal form, the necessary information contained in the proposal is extracted and processed by software. Tracking and low-level error detection can be handled with software, while more intellectually challenging tasks are handled by people. This paper discusses the current system for Phase I proposers to use the HST, including some of the tools available for automating a proposal submission process. This paper is an update of the system described in the published paper 'Computer-assisted Proposal Submission Systems'. This system has been in use for the past three HST cycles and is being used for the most current call for proposals.