I've heard that my friends in the United States…
I've heard that my friends in the United States have chosen the objects that I'll be looking at after I get into space. Over this past summer, American astronomers wrote proposals for what they wanted me to look at. They have to specify the object and the reasons for looking at it. Sometimes different astronomers want to observe the same object. So in order to get chosen, an astronomer has to write a well-written proposal, and give good reasons why their proposal should be picked to observe the object. There were 160 proposals, so there was lots of competition.
Just yesterday another group of astronomers finished the job of reading those proposals and deciding which objects to look at. That list of objects isn't available now. That's because the Japanese astronomers have done the same thing. In December the Americans and Japenese scientists on the Astro-E2 Science Working Group will merge these two lists.
I heard that American students can also propose objects for me to look at.
