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MAST Staff - 2026 Aug 28The Wolf Amendment and STScI's Science Platforms
The US Congressional Wolf Amendment (Section 1340 of Public Law 112-10) prohibits NASA from using government funds to support bilateral activities involving the government of the People’s Republic of China and China-affiliated organizations. This has consequences for STScI’s science platforms.
STScI has implemented geographical location restrictions that prevent China-based users from accessing the Roman Research Nexus, TIKE and JWebbinar science platforms. VPNs will not allow users to circumvent this block. All data holdings in MAST remain open access, but China-based users will not have access to compute resources through our science platforms. Please plan your data access and research activities accordingly.
These restrictions apply to investigators based in the People’s Republic of China irrespective of their nationality; they do not apply to Chinese nationals working in other countries. For more information about impacts of the Wolf Amendment on JWST and HST grant funding, see the STScI newsletter.