STScI announces the selected JWST General Observer programs for Cycle 3. This follows the review of submitted proposals by the JWST Telescope Allocation Committee, which made recommendations to the STScI Director, who approved the final selection. The selection is balanced across a wide range of science topics from asteroids and exoplanets to cosmology, with a distribution that matches the submitted proposals. More detailed information about the approved proposals is now available.

The Cycle 3 GO program includes 253 proposals for approximately 5,500 hours of JWST prime time and up to 1,000 hours of parallel time, as well as 25 archival and 12 theory proposals. This establishes the program for JWST’s third year of science operations, reflecting the aspirations of the worldwide community of observers. The selected proposals were prepared by more than 2,097 unique investigators from 41 countries, including 39 U.S. states plus D.C., 18 ESA member states, and 6 Canadian provinces. Twelve percent of the proposals are led by student Principal Investigators.

The Cycle 3 GO prime time is distributed as follows:

• 43% to small programs (less than 25 hours)
• 35% to medium programs (25 to 75 hours)
• 22% to large programs (more than 75 hours)

The schedule includes 11 Large and Treasury programs that will provide the community with immediate access to more than 1280 hours of JWST data.

JWST is now poised to build on its first two years of discoveries. Selection of the General Observer programs represents a tremendous effort by the ~6,000 investigators who submitted proposals, the 167 community members who served as expert reviewers, the 434 members of the Telescope Allocation Committee, and the JWST teams at STScI and NASA.