NASA has generally awarded a portion of the observing time in the years following the installation of a new instrument to those scientists involved in the development of this instrument. The interests of these Guaranteed Time Observers (GTOs) are protected through duplication policies, as described in
Section 5.2.1.
The COS GTO team had 555 orbits of Guaranteed Time. Most of these orbits were included in the Cycle 17 and 18 observing plan (see
http://www.stsci.edu/hst/proposing/docs/COS-GTO). Some of this data will still be proprietary, and some visits may not
execute until after the formal start of Cycle 19.
WFC3 is a NASA-built instrument, with no associated GTO team and no GTO science program. However, the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee is pursuing an Early Release Science Program using DD time (see
http://www.stsci.edu/hst/proposing/docs/WFC3-ERS). Observations obtained for the ERS program are non-proprietary and available for incorporation in AR proposals (see
Section 3.4.5).
