NASA to announce Hubble Space Telescope discovery next week

Officials with the Hubble Space Telescope program have some new science to share on Wednesday (March 30).

A NASA statement promises "one for the record books" and an "exciting new observation" from the nearly 32-year-old telescope. It's tricky to guess what that discovery might be, given that the Hubble Space Telescope's work stretches from exoplanets to galaxies to measuring the expansion of the universe. (That last bit garnered the multiobservatory team a Nobel Prize.)

NASA has offered little other information beyond promising that the "Hubble result not only extends our understanding of the universe, but creates an exciting area of research for Hubble's future work with NASA's newly-launched James Webb Space Telescope."

Webb launched on Dec. 25 and is aligning its instruments and mirrors to get ready for observational work scheduled to begin around June. Hubble is about to celebrate another anniversary of its deployment from space shuttle Discovery on April 25, 1990.

Scientists from the Webb telescope team have in recent months highlighted how Hubble's decades of observations are serving as a wayfinder for the newly launched telescope.

CREDITS:
The Hubble Space Telescope being deployed April 25, 1990, from the space shuttle Discovery. (Image credit: NASA/Smithsonian Institution/Lockheed Corporation)

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