All right.
Thank you everyone so much for being here.
And thank you, Patrick, for that introduction.
Really excited to have everyone here.
I also want to welcome our guests.
We have representatives from the local, state
congressional levels and the Maryland Economic Development Corporation.
So we're really give you a warm welcome.
And glad to have you here at Goddard today.
As we know, we have an extremely brilliant legacy of light here at Goddard.
And we're going to go through a few of those key observable areas
and talk about, the real wonder and, excitement that they bring.
We have Doctor Jennifer Wiseman.
She's our senior product science project scientist for Hubble Space Telescope,
and this is NASA's most successful mission to date, I think.
It's still going strong after more than 34 years after launch.
That's more than 1.6 million observations
and about 21,000 peer reviewed scientific papers
and about 1.2 million total citations in published papers.
Incidentally, now the number of papers that have been published from the archive
exceeds the number of papers published from original observation.
It's a gift that keeps on giving.
We also
have Doctor Jane Rigby,
the senior project scientist for James Webb Space Telescope.
And, this is our second science anniversary for this groundbreaking
telescope.
I was asked earlier, what's my favorite image from Webb?
And, my favorite image is the photograph that I took of the launch,
at the launch site in French Guiana,
because that was such the start of such a fantastic journey.
We also have Doctor Julie McHenry, and she is our senior project
scientist for the NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
This year, we have now all of the parts
of the telescope in our clean room here in Greenbelt.
So it marks the next step of putting together
this amazing observatory that will launch in just a couple of years.
And we have doctor Giada Arney.
She is the interim project scientist for the Habitable Worlds Observatory,
and this is the next big flagship observatory
after Roman and Goddard just opened the project office.
So it's another remarkable milestone as we start our future
of our legacy of light.
So we have a fantastic vision.
We hope that you enjoy this show.
So without further ado, we're going to get started. Thank you.
Minus ten go for main engine start.
We are.
Go for main engine start T minus six 54321.
And liftoff of the Space Shuttle Discovery with the Hubble Space Telescope.
Our window on the universe.
Mission control Houston.
Roll program.
Roger. All.
Discovery.
The roll maneuver puts the vehicle in the proper
launch plane.
Isn't that cool to see Hubble launch?
Good afternoon.
It is my honor and pleasure to celebrate with you today.
NASA's remarkable Hubble Space Telescope and how Hubble is a leader
for the future of astrophysics.
So as we talk about this legacy of light today,
the theme of our event, it's fitting that we first reflect on some of the iconic
imagery and scientific breakthroughs that have been enabled by Hubble
from its
perch in low Earth orbit above the clouds.
Hubble surprised us by revealing a universe
that is active and awesome at every scale.
Iconic, colorful nebulae
are signposts of continuing star formation.
Newly formed stars light up the surrounding gas with ionizing
radiation, while winds from the stars often sculpt the surrounding
star, forming dust clouds into pillars pointing back toward the stars.
Hubble found that many young stars are forming with dusty circumstellar disks.
We now know these as the birthplaces of planets.
We've watched as old and dying stars
enrich the environment for the next generation.
We see our own solar system teeming with activity.
We've watched weather changing on the outer planets, asteroids colliding,
and even possible plumes of water vapor escaping
from the under eyes open ocean on Europa.
I'm looking forward to Europa Clipper investigating these more closely.
I think what moves me the
most are Hubble's views of deep space
and galaxies beyond our own Milky Way.
Hubble's Deep Field show that galaxies
change and grow over cosmic time.
That they interact with one another.
Their mergers spawn, bursts of star formation.
Hubble first confirmed that galaxies
harbor supermassive black holes at their cores.
And now Hubble is discovering more of these in the early universe
than ever expected with incredible precision.
Hubble has also measured the current expansion rate
of the universe, and refined it to the point where it now
seems to conflict with predictions from standard cosmological models.
So we might be headed toward new physics.
Today here.
We're looking forward.
Hubble is actually more scientifically
powerful today in many ways than ever before.
I want to share what I see is several great ways
that Hubble is leading the future of astrophysics.
Hubble is in
good condition thanks to the series of successful servicing missions
and an impressive operations team on the ground, including many right here.
Experts at Goddard and the Space Telescope Science
Institute address every technical challenge.
They've even figured out how to precisely point Hubble using only one gyroscope.
Even though we have more and how to precisely support
a full suite of science instruments, including cameras and spectrographs.
So it looks like
Hubble will be in good shape, well, through this decade and beyond.
And we're in good hands.
I'm continually impressed by this awesome team.
Hubble is in strong scientific demand.
It is the only large space observatory in the coming decade with the ability
to see ultraviolet light, which can only be viewed from space.
This kind of energetic light is paramount for modern astrophysics.
It's produced from many kinds
of cosmic phenomena, from planets to star forming galaxies.
We're using this
light to watch hundreds of stars.
We see planetary auroras lighting up,
and we study the composition of exoplanet atmospheres.
We even caught an exoplanet in the process of forming
as it pulls material from its surroundings.
Hubble is part of a powerful team.
When we combine its observations with those of observatories
that concentrate on different wavelengths of light,
like the web or the future Roman space telescopes.
Together, Hubble and Webb
are working to generate a more complete picture of our universe.
Take, for example, this spiral galaxy with Hubble
revealing hotspots of star formation all along the spiral arms,
and Webb's infrared view showing the heated dust lanes,
those famous pillars of creation seem to come alive.
As Hubble shows, the structure of the cloud and Webb pierce
through the dust to see more stars and infant stars inside.
Together, these observatories are looking deep
into the universe to map out cosmic history.
As Webb detects the most distant infant galaxies, and Hubble
shows us the details of star formation in similar galaxies nearby.
Hubble is a powerhouse
for studying phenomena that change with time.
Astronomers are taking new observations and combining them with data from Hubble's
incredible archive to make new discoveries that are not possible any other way.
For example, we're seeing how decades of observations of Neptune
show clouds coming and going in sync
with the solar cycle.
In concert with other missions,
Hubble is transforming our view of the solar system.
We're studying Jupiter's clouds and magnetic activity in sync with
the Juno probe.
And when the Dart mission intentionally impacted an asteroid,
Hubble and Webb watched the impact debris.
And Hubble continues to monitor a swarm of boulders
knocked away from the surface by the blast.
We're
better understanding how Mars lost its water using detections
from the Hubble and Maven missions
continuing to look forward.
Future astronomy missions are going to be serviceable.
Our experience was five incredible astronaut
servicing missions to Hubble is informing future missions.
Servicing one of the most exciting aspects of mine as a career
has been to see the successful team work across the scientific,
engineering, and human spaceflight cultures of NASA
that made Hubble servicing missions so successful and inspirational.
These experiences are helping NASA plan both
human and robotic approaches for future missions.
Hubble Science
Teams are pioneers, including citizen scientists
from the public around the world in real scientific research.
For example, volunteers identified over 1000 photobombing
asteroids in over 37,000 Hubble images over 19 years.
This team helped develop artificial intelligence algorithms
to identify asteroids.
And these techniques can be applied to future research
using new approaches like machine learning and AI.
As we prepare for big data from missions
like the Roman Space Telescope, which you'll hear about later.
And beyond Roman
will come the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
Hubble is a primary science and technology
precursor for this future observatory.
Hubble views the same wavelength bands of light
that habitable worlds will see, and the Hubble science in the coming
decade will set the stage and build teams for the full range of astrophysics
that the Habitable Worlds Observatory will address.
Those teams will include young people who were inspired
to enter into Stem careers because of Hubble.
The mission is involving more new scientists than ever before.
One third of our newly accepted
Hubble observing proposals are led by first time principal investigators,
and thanks to example outreach, including our exemplary outreach team here.
The public excitement for exploration, astronomy
and NASA is fueled by Hubble's continuing discoveries.
Hubble images encourage us to reflect
on what it means to be human.
You know, nothing gives me more satisfaction
than seeing the eyes of young people light up as they realize how science,
engineering, and curiosity
can unite humanity for something positive.
To look up at the sky and consider the amazing universe
and our place in it.
I'll close with a quote from the findings
presented by the last NASA senior review of the Hubble Space Telescope mission.
Looking to the future of Hubble, the panel said that Hubble continues
to be a scientific powerhouse, unique in breadth and depth.
It is truly a great observatory.
Hubble plays a key intellectual role in interrogating and challenging
current scientific paradigms, driving discovery at the frontier.
So I am excited about Hubble's future.
And as we follow this legacy of light, let me now
welcome Doctor Jane Rigby, who will tell us about
the new astronomical marvel, the James Webb Space Telescope.
Thank you.
Hi, everybody.
Thank you for being here.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful
and the most in-demand telescope that the world has ever seen.
Now in its third year of science operations,
the Webb telescope is 100 times more powerful than its predecessors.
The technical performance is fabulous on every metric.
It's better than requirements.
It's frankly better than we dared hope.
Webb's technology, namely segmented deployable space optics,
lays a clear path for the future.
There are papers coming out every day,
a firehose of discoveries on subjects covering a wide swath of astrophysics
from the solar system to exoplanets, star formation
to supermassive black holes to the very most distant galaxies.
We're doing transformative science
every day, and my biggest problem right now is keeping up.
Also, Webb is turning into something,
a symbol to the country and to the world.
Webb science is audacious and bold on a scale that only
the United States can lead.
Webb tackles the grand challenge of how galaxies
like our own Milky Way galaxy formed after the Big Bang
and then evolved over the 13.8 billion year history of the universe.
Before Webb, we knew almost nothing about how galaxies
formed in the first billion years of cosmic time.
Webb has now found thousands of galaxies at those early times,
transforming our understanding of the cosmic frontier.
The current record holder.
But it could be broken next month.
Is it redshift 14.3?
We are seeing this galaxy as it looked when the universe
was only 300 million years old.
It's now 13.8. So we're seeing out.
We're seeing back through most of cosmic time.
These early galaxies are more numerous,
and they are forming stars more rapidly than we expected.
Many of these galaxies have rapidly growing already supermassive
black holes in their centers again earlier than we expected.
We're measuring what these galaxies are made of.
We are charting how the stars created the elements the carbon, the oxygen,
the nitrogen that make up our bodies and are necessary for life on Earth.
Webb is showing us how these small early galaxies
evolved over cosmic time into galaxies like our home, the Milky Way.
Much closer to home, Webb is studying galaxies
like our own Milky Way, often working in tandem with Hubble.
Webb studies exoplanets, which are planets orbiting other stars.
Webb is telling us what the atmospheres of these exoplanets are like.
Measuring many molecules like water, methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, carbon
monoxide enough to determine the chemistry
of these exotic worlds.
And when I say exotic, I mean exotic.
Many of these planets that Webb is
studying are like nothing in our own solar system.
We're studying Jupiters that orbit their star once a day.
We've studied a rocky planet
with a temperature of 3000 degrees that's covered in lava
for small, rocky planets.
Webb is delivering fabulous precision such that we're often
limited by what's going on on the planet.
Clouds host star activity rather than anything
going on in our very stable telescope.
Looking at Trappist one,
which is the closest exoplanet system that might be habitable,
Webb has shown that there are not thick atmospheres on planets B
and C, and we're continuing to study the other planets.
And that's just for early science.
Webb is now building on those initial discoveries.
Digging deeper, getting more diagnostics.
We've really following up on those early surprises and hitting our stride.
Now I'm asking, and I bet
you're asking to any of those exoplanets host life.
You know, I want to know that, too.
Are we alone or not?
Webb can search for atmospheres on Earth sized worlds.
But is there life?
As you'll hear from Doctor Ani, that requires a bold new telescope.
I want to take
a moment to celebrate the team.
Webb's success is due to the hard
work of about 20,000 people
from 14 countries industry, academia, three space agencies
all coming together to do something audacious.
Some of those 20,000 are probably in this room, so you know who you are.
Thank you.
Scientists from about 57 countries
and counting have proposed observations on the Webb telescope,
and scientists in almost every state are analyzing Webb data.
And Nebraska, I'm looking at you.
Well, we'll get to all 50.
Webb was an audacious thing to build,
and it works exactly as it was designed to do.
Its task was to unfold a telescope much bigger than its rocket
to unfold and tension a sunshield that's the size of a tennis court.
And then make all 18 primary mirror segments work together
as perfectly as physics allows.
All done in the dark, alone,
headed out a million miles away from the earth.
And it all worked.
That success is no accident.
It required exceptional engineering at every step,
from the early concept to a methodically thought out design.
And now a highly productive observatory.
And now that Webb works, it lays the technical path for what comes next.
Webb demonstrated that we can build and deploy telescopes
that are bigger than the rockets that carry them to space.
Webb demonstrates U.S.
leadership in large space optics.
Every few days, Webb senses the position
of each mirror to a few billionths of a meter
so that we can move the mirrors into perfect alignment.
This exacting technology, called wavefront sensing of deployed
segmented space optics was developed for Webb is key to our technical success
and is absolutely pathfinding for the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
Webb also couldn't be fully tested on the ground.
Computer models anchored to real world tests
perfectly predicted how the telescope behaves in space.
So this engineering experience from Webb means that the Habitable Worlds
Observatory out of the gate is much further along than was Webb.
At a similar stage.
So Webb is a revolutionary
scientific instrument, and it's a triumph of engineering.
But as I give talks to the public and I give media interviews,
I've come to realize that it's something else.
It's become a symbol.
Webb demonstrates U.S.
leadership in Stem.
It demonstrates the power of international cooperation.
It's a kind of soft power ambassador, a reason that the United States
and its partner countries are admired around the world.
When we launched Webb, everyone was rooting for it.
So Webb became a symbol of what we can accomplish when we work together,
a symbol of striving collectively for a greater purpose.
And also, Webb images speak to people.
They remind us that we're connected to the universe.
There were part of a bigger, transcendent story
that we really are
literally made of stardust, and that each of us belongs to the universe.
So I've come to realize this.
Maybe it's cheesy, but I think it's true that Webb's
exploration of the universe is good for the soul of our country.
History will remember these telescopes and what they've learned long
after we're gone.
So looking ahead, the best science with Webb is still ahead of us.
We are just now getting to the good stuff.
And also, I can't wait for when Webb will be working
in tandem with the Roman Space Telescope.
Webb's technologies of deployable space optics and wavefront
sensing are the building blocks needed for the Habitable worlds.
Observatory.
So in closing, working together, we build something incredibly hard to build.
And so powerful.
Webb works beautifully.
The science is pouring down like a waterfall.
Webb shows us the universe that's been out there all along,
waiting for us to open our eyes and see
next.
Doctor Julie McHenry will describe the the next NASA astrophysics
flagship, Roman.
After more than 30 years of observations,
Hubble continues to revolutionize our understanding of the universe.
But what about what it hasn't yet seen?
Most of the sky remains to be explored.
And this is where the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope comes in.
Using the same sensitivity and performance we've come to expect from Hubble,
Roman will have a much larger field of view,
allowing us to see more of the sky at once.
Where Webb goes deep, Roman goes big.
It starts at our field of view.
At any instant, Roman will see 200 times the amount of sky that Hubble can see.
But it's more than that.
Roman will move and stop and be ready to take the next image very quickly,
so we can survey the sky more than a thousand times faster than Hubble.
To put this into context.
A survey that would take Roman one month would take a century with Hubble.
So Roman doesn't do Hubble science faster.
It can address entirely new, ambitious science questions.
This leads to extraordinary capabilities
that one month of Roman observations could survey the Milky Way,
resulting in the detection of over half the stars in our galaxy.
Those over 50 billion stars would represent a catalog
of astronomical objects much larger than any in existence today.
With just one month of Roman observations.
Periodically, Roman
will turn its sights towards the center of our galaxy
and monitor 200 million stars in a small patch of sky.
Every 15 minutes.
But it won't only image millions of stars,
it will discover tens of thousands of new exoplanets.
To date, we found around 5000 planets beyond our solar system.
With Roman, we'll find up to 40 times more.
Think of this as the largest census we've ever done of other planets in our galaxy.
This will not only provide critical information
into how planets form, but will also reveal more about
the different types of planets that exist around different stars.
Such information will not only help us understand the nature of other planets,
but also of our own solar system.
We'll be able to delve deeper into the unknown,
the physical nature of dark matter and dark energy,
which drive the evolution and future of our own universe, remain
outstanding grand challenges in both physics and astronomy.
Addressing these was a prime motivation for Roman.
We'll address this in three different ways.
Our universe is a very dynamic place that puts
on spectacular cosmic displays every second.
The problem is that these events happen
very quickly and often elude our telescopes.
With Roman's panoramic vision
will not only catch these events, but see many at once.
We'll see tens of thousands of supernovae
and use these as markers to track the expansion of our universe.
We'll map huge swaths of the sky and find billions of galaxies.
We'll measure the shapes of these galaxies and use this to uncover
the distribution of dark matter in our universe.
And third,
by precisely measuring the position and distance of galaxies,
we'll be able to create a 3D map of the universe and watch
how it changes on large scales over time.
These three investigations combined will enable us to study how the structures
in our universe the stars, the galaxies and clusters of galaxies grew and evolved.
They'll also allow us to measure how our universe has expanded over time.
These are the keys that will allow us to unlock the fundamental nature
of dark energy and dark matter, and the fabric of the universe itself.
These studies are even more exciting now.
As Doctor Wiseman mentioned, we are seeing hints
that our standard model of the universe is incorrect.
Roman will be able to confirm this
and provide the data needed to explore the new phenomenon.
So it's really tremendously exciting where we're likely to go beyond current models
and get to explore entirely new phenomenon for the first time.
We happen to be the right mission, with the right capabilities at the right time.
What makes me most excited about Roman is the discovery potential.
Which 2 billion galaxies will have 2000 objects that are 1 in 1,000,000?
We'll be exploring patches of sky over a function of time
with exquisite sensitivity.
We'll find new things that go bump in the night.
I very much hope and in fact, expect,
that the most exciting science from Roman will be a surprise,
something we couldn't predict.
That will set the stage for the next deeper set of questions
about our universe, for future missions to address.
Roman is being built right now.
Over the past few years, we've been busy building and testing Roman hardware.
We've installed an astonishing 45 miles of cables. the observatory
nervous system, into the spacecraft structure.
We've integrated other critical elements, including the propulsion tanks.
We've also installed a deployable high gain antenna,
which will support data transmission rates up to 500mbps.
This is much faster than my home internet, and Roman needs to do
this wirelessly from 1 million miles away.
We've completed the outer parts of the observatory,
including the solar panels and sunshield.
We've finished and tested the outer viral assembly
that will ultimately surround the telescope.
The Widefield Instrument, our primary instrument,
has now concluded testing and is awaiting further integration at Goddard.
This is the part of the observatory that provides the huge field of view
that drives Roman's revolutionary science research.
This instrument is a symbol of our critical partnerships.
Engineers from Goddard and Bar Systems have been working side by side
to make Roman's wide field of view the best that it can be.
By enhance the Goddard design for the instrument,
resulting in better sensitivity and more flexible observing options,
we'll have a better observatory as a result.
Our telescope, built by L3 Harris, has arrived at Goddard
and has been integrated into the instrument carrier last month.
You should come to the clean room and have a look.
It's all there.
This coming
year will be very exciting as we watch the observatory take shape.
We will assemble the components into the complete
Roman observatory and carefully test everything.
All the remaining assembly and test will be happening at Goddard,
and we'll be taking advantage
of all the large integration and test facilities here.
Roman development is proceeding on budget
and on schedule, and we're looking forward to getting it to the finish line.
I really can't start to express how exciting it is
to see everything coming together every day.
We're learning more about just how great this observatory
is going to perform.
Each NASA astrophysics
mission bills and the technology successes of the past.
A great example of this is the sensors at the heart of Hubble,
Webb and Roman that produce the great images of the universe we've all
come to love.
They represent a continuous line of development and innovation,
starting in the 90s with the development of the one K detector and Hubble's with C
three further developed and improved for the two K detectors in Webb's
near come and finally culminating in the 4K sensors in Roman.
Each generation of sensor represented
a big leap in performance.
With Roman, we start a whole new path of technology
development with the Roman coronagraph, which was designed and built at JPL.
A coronagraph is a type of instrument that can throw out the light
of a bright star,
so that we can directly image planets and other faint objects beside it.
For the Roman coronagraph, I think of this as doing magic with physics.
We're taking advantage
of the wave properties of light to cancel out the light from the star.
To do this magic, we need to have an optical system
that can adjust itself to maintain sufficient precision.
This will be the first time that this kind of active optics
has been used in space, and will set us on a new path
for future observatories to do extraordinary new things.
Our namesake,
Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's first chief astronomer, would be excited
not just by how far we have come, but by where we are going.
She is widely known as the mother of Hubble.
Less well known is that in 1959, she was one of the first people to suggest
using a space based observatory to look at planets around other stars.
Doctor Roman felt that such an observatory would be too big
and too difficult to be feasible in orbit.
But which developments from Hubble, Webb and soon Roman?
This is now within reach, and the next speaker, Doctor Giada Arney,
will describe what the next leap in space based astrophysics will bring.
Good afternoon everyone.
Take a breath with me.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
All of us in this room are breathing oxygen.
And that oxygen is a way that our planet's biosphere has been saying
hello to the rest of our universe for billions of years.
Virtually all of the oxygen that we're breathing right now
is a byproduct of oxygenic photosynthesis,
our biospheres dominant metabolism.
When photosynthetic microbes evolved billions of years ago,
the oxygen that accumulated over time could be detected across the light years.
And all you'd need is a powerful telescope
and a little knowledge about photochemistry to realize
that Earth's atmosphere is too weird
to explain without life.
We call remotely observable signs of life biosignatures.
Oxygen is not the only one.
Others include ozone, methane, nitrous oxide, and more.
The Habitable Worlds Observatory, or HWO,
will be the first observatory designed specifically to address
one of the most important questions in the history of humanity.
Are we alone?
Achieving this will require
some breathtaking technological advancements.
Each day, we all will.
For the first time, study the atmospheres of Earth
like planets around stars like our sun.
Think of them as our cosmic cousins.
To do this, we want to observe the planets directly in reflected light.
This will be challenging.
An Earth like planet is 10 billion
times dimmer than a star like our sun.
It's hard to visualize what this means.
People will often use the analogy of seeing a firefly next
to a lighthouse, but that's not a perfect analogy.
The firefly is too bright
and the lighthouse is too dim.
But you get the idea.
This is going to be very challenging to see the planet.
We need to block out the starlight with powerful new technologies.
Each of you will build on technological advancements already underway.
As you heard from doctor McHenry, the Roman Space Telescope will include
a complex coronagraph to block out the starlight and study exoplanets.
Each swell will include an even more powerful
coronagraph able to see planets the size of Earth.
That complex instrument must be paired
with the most ambitious telescope that NASA has ever built.
We will draw from the lessons and technologies
of previous observatories, including Webb's amazing
segmented telescope, which is performing beyond expectations.
As you heard from Doctor Rigby, Goddard's ultra stable
technology development will take us beyond Webb
to the image quality that we need in the search for life.
We'll start by looking for planets in their star's habitable zones.
The habitable zone is the region around a star
where you can have liquid water on a planet's surface.
But not all planets in the habitable zone will actually be habitable.
For example, if you are looking for a chocolate
chip cookie, a bakery is a good place to start.
But not every cookie in the bakery will be the type you're searching
for. You'd need to examine each one to determine which ones are
actually chocolate chip.
Likewise, we will need to carefully measure the light
from each planet in the habitable zone to search for the spectral
fingerprints of water and determine which planets
might actually be habitable.
But telling whether a planet is habitable
is different from determining whether a planet is inhabited.
And that's where the search for biosignatures comes in.
We'll look for those important gases like oxygen,
methane and ozone.
Of course, we also want
to be avoid being fooled by false positives.
Those are non-living planets that look alive.
That's like thinking something is a chocolate chip cookie,
but then biting into it and discovering that it's an oatmeal raisin cookie.
So to rule out false positives, we will need to carefully study
all biosignatures in the context of their environments.
And each swallow will be designed to do this with a telescope like H.
We may know the answer to the question
are we alone within our lifetimes?
This would be one of the most important discoveries,
not just in the history of science, but in human history.
But it's important to emphasize that, like NASA's other Great Observatories,
H1 will be capable of game
changing discoveries across a broad range of science areas.
It will be a full astrophysical observatory
studying the entire universe
for every possible Earth like planet discovered.
It will discover ten times as many other kinds of planets.
Those hundreds of other worlds will help us to understand
our own solar system in a broader cosmic context.
Speaking of our solar system, I like to call these nearby worlds
the exoplanets in our backyard, and we will be able to see them
in incredible detail and high definition with well.
For example, this beautiful
image of Jupiter was taken by the Juno spacecraft.
And incredibly, when Jupiter is at its closest approach to Earth.
We will be able to see almost this level
of detail on Jupiter with a low
Hubble web.
And soon Roman have been and will be providing literally
astronomical leaps across astrophysics.
H a will to reaching unpressed admittedly faint objects
with unmatched clarity.
Galaxies are among the most beautiful objects in our universe.
They are complex arrangements of stars, gas, dust, dark matter, and more.
We know that galaxies grow through the mergers of smaller galaxies,
but we still have questions about the details that drive them
to have different morphologies and star formation histories.
With each high resolution imager.
We will be able to further our studies of galaxy formation by resolving
small, faint galaxies in the very distant universe,
including galaxies smaller and fainter
than the ones we have been able to study before.
These galaxies, which are the building blocks of galaxies like our own, are about
as faint as the Earth like planets we're searching for around nearby stars.
Studying them will help us to help better understand how our own
Milky Way came to be.
And as we think about searching for signs of life beyond Earth.
We should remember that the tree of life is rooted in the stars.
The elements that make up our bodies were forged in stars billions of years ago.
Each swallow will help us to trace these cycles
of matter across the universe.
If galaxies are the factories of stars and planets, this hot gas flowing
between galaxies is their fuel tank, waste dump and recycling center.
Most of this cycling of hot, tenuous
matter is currently unobserved, but aid swell will map these streams
with unprecedented sensitivity in the ultraviolet.
As you heard from Doctor Wiseman,
a major part of Hubble's unique legacy
comes from access to observations in the ultraviolet.
And this will be a significant part of science story as well.
We will also echo Hubble's legacy as a multi-generation
observatory lasting for decades thanks to in-space servicing.
H-2b will will continue and expand the great legacy
of light of NASA's flagship observatories such as Hubble, Webb, and Roman.
We don't yet know exactly what it will look like,
but we can safely say that this project will be a momentous undertaking.
It's going to take a village including Goddard, other NASA
centers, industry partners, academia, international partners,
and the broader community.
This pale
blue dot image of Earth was taken by NASA's Voyager one spacecraft
when it was almost 4 billion miles away from the sun.
What might it mean to see another Earth,
another pale, point like vision,
calling to us with its light from deep space?
Is Earth alone in the universe?
The Habitable Worlds Observatory will be capable of addressing
some of the biggest questions we have today,
and questions that we can't yet think to ask.
Now, let's close the
show with a final glimpse of what's on the horizon.
The legacy of what we're building, what we're discovering,
and the incredible journey ahead.
Let's roll the video.
We have always looked to the sky
in wonder.
Questioning the universe's story
and our place in it.
In the vastness of space.
Are we alone?
Each generation of telescope and technology
has brought us closer to the answer.
Human determination has taken us
farther than we could have imagined.
This legacy leads to our next chapter.
And the answers that lie in the stars.
Are waiting for us to find them.