Updates from the Director’s Office 

By Ben Carollo and Mercedes López-Morales

STScI enters the new year well prepared to support community science with our missions. The Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Bill that includes funding for NASA was passed into law at the end of January. As in past years, the bill includes strong bipartisan support for astronomy in general and our missions in particular.

We look forward to continued strong community interest in Hubble and Webb: the Hubble Cycle 34 Call for proposals is active with a deadline of April 16, while the Webb Telescope Allocation Committee meets in early February to set the Cycle 5 science program. Finally, Roman is well on track for launch by May 2027, possibly as early as fall 2026, with science operations beginning after a three-month commissioning period. Further details are given below and in presentations made at the STScI Town Hall at the 2026 AAS winter meeting. STScI will also hold a virtual Town Hall for the broader community on February 2.

The Rocky Worlds program, which aims to investigate the cosmic shoreline — the demarcation between rocky planets around M dwarfs with and without atmospheres, released five new targets, bringing the sample to a total of nine planetary systems. The rationale for the target selection is described in Redfield et al. 2024 (arXiv: 2404.02932). The program also saw its first release of high-level science products (HLSPs) for both HST and JWST. The set of HST HLSPs correspond to the reconstructed Ly-α profile for GJ-3929b while two eclipses of the system were observed by JWST and those data products are also available via MAST. Community members can keep up to date on progress by visiting rockyworlds.stsci.edu.

Director's Discretionary Time on Hubble and Webb provides the community with key resources that enable rapid follow-up observations of new discoveries. 2025 saw a significant upturn in proposals, particularly for Webb, leading to a substantial increase in demand for reviews by community members. Many of those proposals were deemed better suited to the annual call. With that in mind, following discussions with the STUC and the JSTUC, we are adjusting the submission criteria to focus more closely on high-impact science. Full details are available in those STUC and JSTUC presentations.

Hubble Space Telescope at STScI

By Julia Roman-Duval, Marc Rafelski, and John MacKenty

Hubble observing and research opportunities

The HST Cycle 34 Call for Proposals was released on December 12, 2025, and all programmatic and technical information, including specific guidelines for proposal preparation, are available online. Check out the announcement, the HST Cycle 34 Call for Proposals, HST Primer, and HST Phase I Proposal Roadmap for all the details. Proposers are strongly encouraged to consult the What’s New for Cycle 34 section to learn about new initiatives, policies, and operational developments, in particular the new Habitable Worlds Observatory precursor science initiative. Note that the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Wide Field Channel (WFC) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) IR are fully supported, but may be available as shared risk pending future appropriations.

Following presidential approval of the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriation Bill, NASA has provided $12 million to support HST Cycle 33 research programs. Program budget details will be shared with investigators via budget notification letters, expected early February 2026. We anticipate a budget submission deadline in early March 2026.

The Space Telescope User Committee (STUC) met on December 18 and 19. Presentations are available on the STUC webpage.

Release of the new and improved Hubble Spectroscopic Legacy Archive (HSLA)

The updated Hubble Spectroscopic Legacy Archive (HSLA) was released on November 14, 2025, as detailed in this newsletter article. The HSLA provides scientifically validated co-added spectra of individual targets obtained with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The HSLA uses data available in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) to automatically produce combined spectra across multiple observing programs, instruments, and gratings whenever new data become publicly available or are recalibrated. HSLA products provide the highest possible signal-to-noise ratio and wavelength coverage, enabling streamlined scientific exploration and analysis. Additionally, the HSLA provides an automated target classification, enabling searches based on astrophysical properties and target name. HSLA products are available on the MAST portal, HST search form, and astroquery. Notebooks are available to guide researchers using the HSLA available tools.

GSFC and STScI teams continue to implement operational improvements to ensure the longevity and scientific productivity of Hubble well into the 2030s

New lifetime positions of COS, LP7 (G130M) and LP10 (G160M), were fully enabled and calibrated for Cycle 33. LP7 and LP10 extend the operational lifetime of the G130M and G160M gratings by several years. While the LP changes are mostly transparent to users, the use of LP7 incurs slightly increased observation overheads compared to LP5, while LP10 has lower overheads than LP6. Information about LP7 and LP10 is available in the COS Instrument Handbook and instrument science reports. The lifetime extension strategy ensures that COS retains its scientific capabilities well into the 2030s.

STScI is working to implement a fraction of imaging using single guide stars, with no impact to the science quality of the data (WFC3 ISR 2025-07). Most one to two orbit visits that are comprised of ACS/WFC and WFC3 exposures less than 500 seconds in duration are being converted to single star guiding (1GS) as part of this pilot program. This approach, which will be generalized to a broader range of imaging observations for Cycle 34, will reduce the usage of the fine guidance sensors (FGS), increase their lifetime, maximize scheduling flexibility, and minimize the observing failure rate. This will ensure that Hubble remains operational, scientifically productive, and efficient well into the next decade.

FGS2 suffered an increased frequency of stalls in early 2025. After implementation of operational mitigations, the observing failure rate is back down to its historical level of < 10%. Hubble has three FGSs and at least two are preferred for operations. Hubble has a 90% probability of having at least two operational FGSs in 2030.

The restoration of the redundancy in the Science Instrument Command & Data Handler (SI C&DH) is nearing completion after a multi-year effort. The side B electronics of the SI C&DH failed in 2021, and operations were promptly moved to side A. Teams at GSFC and STScI developed a software solution to this hardware failure to restore operations on the side B electronics, if needed. With both side A and B available, the probability of the SI C&DH being operational in 2030 is 85%.

Read ongoing Hubble news updates.

James Webb Space Telescope at STScI

By Tom Brown, David Hunter, Macarena Garcia Marin, Jeff Valenti, and Laura Watkins

Demand for telescope time breaks another record

Webb’s solicitation for Cycle 5 generated another record-breaking response from the community, who submitted over 2,900 proposals by the October 15, 2025 deadline. These proposals, spanning the entire field, came from more than 7,500 unique investigators at institutions in 41 U.S. states and 36 other countries. The total request for observing time exceeded 100,000 hours, an oversubscription of nearly 13:1 against the 8,000 hours available. STScI is working to ensure the review workload will remain manageable even if the proposal pool continues to grow in future cycles. The workload can be managed by adjusting various parameters, including the number of proposals per panel, reviewers per panel, preliminary grades per proposal, and triage level.

Inaugural JWST summer school was an enormous success

The first JWST Summer School was held at STScI in August 2025 and focused on the topic, “High Redshift Transients with JWST.” The first week centered on high-z transient science, featuring lectures relevant to the field, while the second week explored observational and analytical techniques covering all stages of a JWST program. Attendees included 45 researchers from 34 different institutions based in 14 countries, emphasizing participation from students and early-career researchers. In addition, 68 virtual participants joined the first week of lectures, coming from 53 institutions and 20 countries. The materials and videos are publicly available on the event webpage as an ongoing resource. Feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive. We plan to conduct the school again in the summer of 2027 and offer it thereafter on a two-year cadence.

JWST performance and capability improvements are driving greater scientific impacts

While Webb’s operational performance has been excellent, our teams have been working to improve and expand the mission’s capabilities. For example, in the most recent window of availability of the highly crowded Galactic center, where target acquisition and guiding have been challenging, guiding improvements led to a 100% success rate for observations. Several new capabilities are available in Cycle 5, including MIRI Wide Field Slitless Spectroscopy, which expands this efficient technique into the uncharted mid-infrared. The NIRISS multi-stripe mode enables observations of exoplanets that transit bright stars. The Moving Target Shadow observations facilitates background subtraction for Solar System objects. The online repository of curated pipeline notebooks has been expanded to include 16 observing modes, greatly facilitating data reduction.

JWST Users Committee

The JWST Users Committee (JSTUC) met at STScI on December 2 and 3. Presentations are available on the JSTUC website.

Cycle 4 grant funding

After delays associated with FY26 budget uncertainties, NASA approved $60 million in funding for Cycle 4. This was communicated to the community via a Grants Administration announcement, presentations to the JWST Users Committee, and email notifications to U.S. investigators.

Find more Webb news, events and articles, and sign up for JWST Observer News.

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope at STScI

Roman is on track to be ready for launch by May 2027, possibly as early as fall 2026, with a primary five-year mission starting in 2027. Thermal vacuum testing of the integrated instruments, telescope, and spacecraft assembly concluded in October 2025. The full observatory was successfully integrated into a single unit in November 2025 and is expected to ship to the Kennedy Space Center in June 2026.

The Cycle 1 Call for Proposals is out, with a deadline of March 17, 2026. Issued by the Roman Science Support Center at IPAC in mid-December, the first call allows the community to submit proposals for the funding of data analysis projects using data from the currently defined Roman surveys, for a limited number of additional General Astrophysics Surveys, and more.

The community definition of Roman’s Galactic Plane General Astrophysics Survey was completed in September 2025. Combined with the three Core Community Surveys — the High-Latitude Wide-Area Survey, the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey, and the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey — these programs will constitute approximately 75% of Roman’s science observations during the five-year prime mission.

STScI has been focused on supporting the astronomical community as they write their proposals for Roman’s Cycle 1 Call for Proposals, and is preparing to support Roman commissioning and operations.

The Roman Research Nexus is ready for you

In December 2025, the Roman Research Nexus was released for community use in early-access mode. This cloud-based science platform includes a pre-configured computing environment that has both installed software and the ability to upload your own software; tutorial Juypter notebooks; workflows for data simulation, exploration, and analysis; computing resources for individuals and teams; real-time collaboration tools; and simulated datasets to help users prepare before Roman’s data begin flowing.

The Nexus will be the primary way to explore and analyze Roman’s data in operations. Staff at STScI will continue to develop the science platform, which is provided by STScI in collaboration with Roman’s partners. Read more about the Nexus.

The Ready, Set, Roman! Training Series is underway

Ready, Set, Roman! Training Series, a suite of webinars designed to enable the community to take full advantage of Roman’s capabilities, kicked off in November 2025. These one-hour sessions explore tools and resources to help you prepare to use Roman's data. Through this series, we offer live, hands-on demonstrations of Roman tools and simulated datasets, and ample time for questions with Roman staff.

This training series is designed to be a welcoming space for all, with students especially encouraged to join. Recordings of past webinars are available on YouTube. Recent trainings include resources for understanding community-defined surveys, Roman simulation tools, the Roman Telescope Proposal System, the Astronomer’s Proposal Tool for Roman, and Roman’s Exposure Time Calculator. This series is produced in collaboration with the Science Support Center at Caltech/IPAC.

STScI also supported multiple training activities at the 247th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in January 2026, including hosting a Nexus workshop and running a joint proposal preparation splinter meeting with Caltech/IPAC.

Roman Science User Panel established

The Roman Science Users Panel (RSUP), organized by the Science Centers and established in late 2025, is charged with representing the community and providing advice to the Roman Project at NASA/GSFC and Science Centers at STScI and Caltech/IPAC on all aspects of Roman operations. The co-chairs are Casey Papovich (Texas A&M University) and Sabrina Stierwalt (Occidental College); the members are Tansu Daylan (Washington University in St. Louis), Kishalay De (Columbia University), Charlie Kilpatrick (Northwestern University), Adam Kraus (University of Texas at Austin), Karen Masters (Haverford College), Michael Meyer (University of Michigan), Adrian Price Whelan (Flatiron institute), M. Claudia Scarlata (University of Minnesota), and Anne Verbiscer (University of Virginia). Members will have a two- to three-year term, and the RSUP is anticipated to meet at least twice per year. 

New and updated articles in RDox provide a wealth of information

Extensive materials are regularly added to and updated on the Roman User Documentation (RDox) as the mission progresses toward launch, including details about preparation for and support of the Cycle 1 Call for Proposals. New articles fully explain the implementation of Roman’s four community-defined surveys: the three Core Community Surveys and the Galactic Plane Survey; and provide an overview of Roman observations planned during the first two years. Also look for new and updated articles in the Wide Field Instrument User Guide and about Roman Simulation Tools, and an update to the Astronomer’s Proposal Tool User guide. RDox is developed in collaboration with the Science Support Center at Caltech/IPAC

STScI is meeting big milestones to support Roman commissioning and operations

Staff recently completed our Science Operations Center (SOC) flight build, which includes all the essential software to support all SOC functions required for Roman launch and commissioning, and enables observation planning and scheduling, prompt data processing and archiving, and user data access via MAST and the Roman Research Nexus. The SOC is currently going through integration and testing to verify and validate all SOC software systems, science data products, and processes. Future development will include support for SOC Data Releases, additional development of catalogs and other data products, updates to the Roman Research Nexus, and much more!

STScI scientists, developers, and operations staff worked iteratively with mission partners and definition committees to implement community-defined surveys in Roman’s Astronomer's Proposal Tool (APT) and create full five-year observing plans to demonstrate and improve the ability to schedule the surveys. Future work will incorporate calibration programs, Coronagraph Instrument demonstration program targets, and, when selected, the Cycle 1 General Astrophysics Surveys. Our staff also participated in commissioning plan development and reviews.

To keep up to date on Roman news for scientists, please visit the Roman Forum or follow NancyRomanSci on Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, and X. For help, please contact the Roman Help Desk.

Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) at STScI

By Janice Lee and Jason Tumlinson

HWO25 Resources

Staff from the STScI Community Missions Office (CMO) led the organization of “Towards the Habitable Worlds Observatory: Visionary Science and Transformational Technology,” held in July 2025 at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center in Washington, D.C. This open community meeting, organized in collaboration with Johns Hopkins, NASA Goddard and JPL, and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (NExScI), brought together about 500 scientists, engineers, industry partners, and space agency stakeholders from around the world in person, and an additional audience of about 100 online. The program featured 10 panel discussions, over 120 plenary and parallel talks, and over 170 posters, to drive forward the scientific vision, technological foundations, and collaboration for NASA’s next flagship astrophysics mission. Recordings of all talks are available and linked from the HWO25 meeting webpage. A two-volume conference proceedings is currently in preparation and will be published by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 2026. 

HWO Science Cases and Exploratory Exposure Time Calculators

STScI staff also supported multiple activities related to Habitable World Observatory at the January 2026 American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting, including a special session where the Community Science and Instrument Team (CSIT) presented progress on transformative science cases that will drive the requirements of the observatory and instruments. CMO staff coordinated the release and endorsement process for the over 60 science cases from the HWO Community Science Working Groups, which will be published in Part I of the HWO25 conference proceedings. Exploratory exposure time calculators that supported the development of these science cases are continually evolving, and can be found on the community HWO website. 

HWO Precursor Science Programs with Hubble and Webb

The community is invited to submit Cycle 34 HST proposals that support HWO science planning through a new HST HWO Precursor Science Initiative. The deadline is Thursday, April 16, 2026. A parallel initiative will be offered in the next Webb Call for Proposals. While dedicated resources are not set aside, proposals submitted under these initiatives will be evaluated using modified review criteria that explicitly consider the strength of their connection to HWO planning and development needs, as well as their potential to advance longer-term science goals.

Learn more about how to get involved in HWO.

Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST)

By Susan Mullally and Jonathan Hargis

MAST hosts data for 25 active and past space missions, and for multiple ground-based surveys, including PanSTARRs and the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys, and continues to build functionality into the mission search forms. Most notably, there are now previews available for JWST and HST. Quick previews help users determine if datasets are interesting for their research without having to download the data to their own computers. There is a new search form for IUE available, and the TESS search form will be coming soon. Over the next six months, MAST is finalizing work on a new catalog interface driven by a powerful distributed database (Greenplum) on the backend to support larger and faster queries of the PanSTARRS PS1 catalog.

MAST is actively preparing to host data from the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. MAST will provide traditional GUI- and API-based catalog and download services for Roman data, in conjunction with providing compute next to the data on the Roman Research Nexus. MAST worked with the Roman Mission Office to present the functionality of the Nexus at the January 2026 American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting.

The MAST Users Group (MUG) met in mid-December 2025. The report and slides are available. The committee focused extensively on what data access will look like for Roman. This includes how to find interesting datasets, how to explore catalogs, and how to programmatically access and directly work with data held in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. The committee also discussed the new collaboration functionality and credit system on the STScI science platforms (i.e., TIKE and the Nexus).

Through the end of March 2026, MAST will gather suggestions from the community about ingesting additional external datasets from other observatories that would improve the science outcomes for Roman. We ask that users describe potential datasets on this input form. MAST and the Roman mission will evaluate submissions to determine if we are able ingest those data. By bringing external data into MAST, we can provide powerful data access support that is consistent with the rest of MAST's data, making interoperability between these data and the Roman data possible for the entire astronomical community.

MAST held a very successful outreach event in partnership with Villanova University in Pennsylvania to show undergraduates how to work with TESS data archived at MAST. This event had more than 30 students from several different liberal arts colleges in the Philadelphia area attend. Students walked away with knowledge about how to find, access, and work with TESS light curve data to study transiting exoplanets and variable stars.

See everything MAST offers, including our latest news updates.

News and Public Outreach at STScI

By Denise Smith and Christine Pulliam

The Office of Public Outreach (OPO) produces tailored products and services that communicate Hubble and Webb’s scientific discoveries, explain the upcoming science of Roman, and support the science community developing the Habitable Worlds Observatory concept. We also use discoveries from across the field of astrophysics to enable science learning. Everything we release is free and may be used in any presentation or public outreach activity.

In the second half of 2025, the OPO news team published 24 press releases sharing groundbreaking discoveries and new images from Hubble and Webb, as well as science that will be enabled by Roman. News publication was impacted by the 43-day partial government shutdown, during which no NASA press releases could be posted. Notable releases included Hubble’s size estimate for interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS and evidence for a new planet around the nearby star Alpha Centauri A. The news team also created sonification assets for Roman press releases, translating simulated time-domain data to sound to represent transients and stellar pulsations. In total, these releases resulted in almost 9,000 articles and other mentions in worldwide media outlets. Scientists with potentially newsworthy results using Hubble or Webb are encouraged to reach out to the STScI news team using these instructions or via email.

In November, we unveiled a new multi-year exhibit of Webb images at Dulles International Airport. Almost 40 large-scale images from Webb are now on display, joining over 30 Hubble images in the same hall. OPO also partnered with the Johns Hopkins University and the Vatican Observatory on “Wonder Bound,” an exhibition that transports visitors into the deepest reaches of space through large-scale, full-color prints of iconic images from Hubble and Webb. Wonder Bound is currently on display in the Vatican Observatory’s Visitors Center in Italy, and in summer 2026 will become part of the Papal Palace’s permanent collection.

Our scientists continue to host virtual public talks through the Deep Space Dialogues series, recently speaking to scientists about exoplanets and planets and objects in our own solar system. OPO has engaged the public through various free events, including Astronomy at the National Mall, Webb events at Grand Tetons and Sequioa and Kings Canyon national parks, the Maryland Science Center “Invent the Future” event, and Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum “Express and Explore” event. We’ve also emphasized the importance of the Rocky Worlds Director’s Discretionary Time program, which will use Webb and Hubble to explore potential atmospheres around rocky exoplanets orbiting red dwarf stars.

OPO created another tactile featuring a full-color version of Webb’s first image of Uranus. The raised features allow users to feel the shape of the planet, the relative size and orientation of the rings as well as the clouds swirling above the pole. 250 of these 12-inch by 12-inch panels with a supplemental facilitator guide have been created and sent around the country to various museums, libraries, and other public learning venues. Sites use the panels to engage blind and visually impaired visitors as well as sighted visitors. Being able to observe the planet with multiple senses has proven engaging for all users.

During the past six months, our NASA’s Universe of Learning team members completed the Cosmic Canvas guides, program guides to engage multi-generational learners in library settings and community hubs as they practice skills in science and art while exploring the topics of exoplanets and stellar evolution. Library professionals and participants provided input during the formative stages of the effort, and subsequent surveys indicated a positive response to connecting science with art.

For real-time updates about our press releases and products, follow our social accounts: Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube, BlueSky, and LinkedIn.

In Case You Missed It

• Expansive Views of the Milky Way: Roman’s Galactic Plane General Astrophysics Survey
• What Can Roman Do for You? Explore Its Four Fully Defined Surveys
• Hubble Cycle 34 Call for Proposals
• Major Upgrades to HST Notebooks within the STScI Notebook Ecosystem
• Updated Hubble Spectroscopic Legacy Archive (HSLA) Includes More Robust Spectra
• Webb and Hubble’s Rocky Worlds Program Is Fully Underway: What to Expect
• Planning and Scheduling Observations with Hubble and Webb
• The Next Big Thing: The Habitable Worlds Observatory and Inaugural HWO25 Conference
• Exploring AI at STScI
• Hubble Cycle 33 Proposal Selection
• Hubble Cycle 33 Science Highlights
• Meeting of Hubble’s Space Telescope Users Committee (STUC)

Upcoming and Recent Events at STScI

Attend upcoming workshops, symposia, and other astronomy community events — and find recordings and information from past events — that are organized by STScI in Baltimore, Maryland.

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