ESA's involvement in NGST

NASA and ESA are presently working towards extending their collaboration on HST to NGST. ESA has initiated technical feasibility studies with the aim of identifying possible European contributions to NGST that might fit within the financial envelope of an "F-type" mission in the parlance of the Horizon 2000+ program me (175 MECU similar to $200M). These studies are due to be completed by mid-1999 and are being carried out in close coordination with the corresponding studies being undertaken on the US side. Although the ESA contributions to NGST have yet to be decided upon in detail, an arrangement similar to the highly successful HST collaboration is foreseen, with ESA providing contributions to the instrumentation, spacecraft and operations in return for open access to the observatory for ESA member state astronomers.