The Letters of Intent

The first response to the ISO Call for Proposals, namely submission of Letters of Intent, was due on 10 June. In all, 1059 potential proposers reacted by announcing a total of 2468 proposals. The division into scientific categories is as follows:

Solar System			163	 6.6
Interstellar Matter		592	24.0
Stellar/Circumstellar Physics	793	32.1
Extragalactic Systems		791	32.1
Cosmology			129	 5.2

As the length of the individual programmes is not yet defined, it is not possible to calculate the total spacecraft time requested. However, assuming a typical programme to be similar to an average guaranteed time programme, then the oversubscription will be about a factor of 10 in time!