The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), a Chinese national science facility, welcomes submission of science proposals for the upcoming observing period scheduled from August 2025 to July 2026. Users of any nationalities or affiliations are invited to submit proposals before the deadline at 16:00 UT on 15th May 2025 through the website http://fast.bao.ac.cn/proposal_submit. Information on the techniques and current performance of the telescope are available at http://fast.bao.ac.cn. Note that only the 19-beam receiver is available for the upcoming observing period.
Over the past five cycles, FAST has been supporting Regular Science Programs (RSPs) and Large Programs (LPs). Starting from the upcoming cycle, a new category of observing programs, Medium-Sized Programs (MSPs), is introduced to support projects targeting astrophysical questions having significant scientific impact and requiring more observing time than RSPs.
Please note that this Call solicits both RSPs and MSPs. Approximately 1,980 hours of observing time will be allocated to these programs for the upcoming cycle.
1. Regular Science Proposals: each requests observing time up to 50 hours.
2. Medium-Sized Projects:
A) Observing time request: 50 ~ 150 hours;
B) Each proposal will be peer reviewed, forming a short list of candidates, which will be asked to give a presentation to the FAST Time Allocation Committee;
C) For this Call, up to 3 MSPs are expected to be supported, each awarded observing time up to 150 hours over 2–3 consecutive years (~50 hours/year);
D) PIs of MSP proposals should be affiliated with an institution in China.
Any proposal should justify why FAST is necessary for the requested observations. Based on the statistics of the last observing period, the oversubscription rate is 4.9 on average, and reaches 7.6 for the LST range of 18 to 22 hours, which approximately corresponds to the Galactic plane time for the FAST.
The FAST started its full operation in January 2020, and is now completing its five science observing period. A list of previously accepted science proposals, including both regular science and large programs, can be found at https://fast.bao.ac.cn/cms/category/1905965623397142529. Note that information on future approved proposals, including titles, PI names, abstracts, and scheduling priorities, will also be posted on the website. Science data obtained through a regular science program have a proprietary period of 12 months. Please see the FAST Data Policy posted at https://fast.bao.ac.cn/cms/article/129/ for more details. To avoid duplication, proposers should query the FAST archive at https://fast.bao.ac.cn/observation_log/observed_source_search before planning observations to check if any existing data meet their scientific goals.
Should you have any further question about the telescope operation and proposal submission, please contact us at fast-proposal-support@nao.cas.cn.
