Updates from the Director’s Office 

By Mercedes López-Morales

STScI enters the second half of 2026 ready to continue supporting the astronomical community to achieve their science with our existing missions, while we prepare with excitement for the launch of Roman at the end of the summer.

We also look forward to the community's continued engagement with Hubble and Webb: Observations for Webb’s Cycle 5 approved programs started July 1, while Hubble’s Time Allocation Committee (TAC) met in June to set Hubble’s Cycle 34 science programs. The Webb Cycle 6 call for proposals is now active with a deadline of September 30. Roman is now confirmed for launch at the end of August, with science operations beginning after a three-month commissioning period. Further details are below and in presentations recently made at the STScI Town Hall at the 2026 AAS summer meeting.

We were excited to see the community’s overwhelming response to the call for white papers to support Hubble science in the 2030s, and look forward to the reports of the working and core groups that will convene in the fall to develop a set of recommendations for key science priorities for Hubble.

We also received a large and positive response to the call for Community Target of Opportunity programs to facilitate observations of variable and transient phenomena with very low occurrence probability, making the science cases unlikely to be selected by regular Time Allocation Committees. Find a list of recommended programs and future steps.

Finally, we’ve successfully completed observations of the first Rocky Worlds program target, GJ 3929b, with Webb and Hubble data products now available to the community.

Hubble Space Telescope at STScI

By Marc Rafelski, Julia Roman-Duval, Joleen Carlberg, and Laura Watkins

Hubble observing and research opportunities

The HST Cycle 34 proposal deadline was April 16, 2026. STScI received 884 proposals: 780 GO proposals requesting 20,487 orbits, corresponding to a 1:7.5 oversubscription, 29 SNAP proposals for 4,047 targets, and 74 AR proposals, submitted by 3,511 unique investigators. The Telescope Allocation Committee (TAC) met in late June, PIs were notified of the results in mid-July, and the results of the TAC process and a summary of the selected science program will be announced soon.

Looking ahead, the Cycle 35 Call for Proposals will be released on December 16, 2026, with a proposal deadline of April 1, 2027. The proposal review will take place in June 2027, with notifications expected in early to mid-July 2027. The cycle will start November 1, 2027.

The Space Telescope Users Committee (STUC) met on April 22 and 23, 2026. Presentations and the report are available on the STUC webpage, and the meeting is summarized in a recent newsletter article.

Building a roadmap for Hubble science into the 2030s

Now in its fourth decade of operations, Hubble remains an indispensable resource for the astronomy and planetary science communities. The current dynamic landscape, with facilities that have complementary and synergistic capabilities (e.g., JWST, Roman, UVEX, Lazuli) and evolving funding constraints motivate an examination of Hubble's science priorities to maximize the use of its unique capabilities and its science output into the 2030s. Estimates of Hubble's current orbital evolution indicate likely atmospheric re-entry in 2033. The possibility of a boost, which would require planning and funding to start in FY27, could expand Hubble's lifetime into a fifth decade and support the astrophysics and planetary science communities with unparalleled high-resolution, high-sensitivity, ultraviolet-optical capabilities through the 2030s.

To gather broad community input, STScI issued a call for white papers addressing the key science questions that can be addressed only by Hubble, the capabilities required to answer them, and Hubble's role in supporting the development of the Habitable Worlds Observatory. The community responded with over 90 white papers covering all areas of astrophysics. Recognizing that writing a white paper demands a significant investment of time and resources, STScI also provided an opportunity to submit science pitches, short descriptions of key science questions that should and can only be addressed by Hubble, together with a brief outline of the required capabilities. Science pitches were accepted through July 15, 2026. The white papers and science pitches will assist STScI and the HST Project Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in developing a roadmap for the programmatic, operational, and scientific future of Hubble through the 2030s.

Release of Slitlessutils v2.0

Wide-field slitless spectroscopy (WFSS) with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) remains a key Hubble capability, providing low-resolution spectra of every source in the field of view. The Slitlessutils package, now released as version 2.0, is the officially supported software for working with WFSS data from ACS and WFC3, providing a unified, forward-modeling framework for preparing, extracting, and simulating slitless spectra. As part of this transition, the legacy HSTaXe package is being retired; it remains available for archival reference but will no longer receive updates, maintenance, or Help Desk support.

Written entirely in Python, Slitlessutils simulates WFSS images, extracts one-dimensional spectra, characterizes contamination between overlapping spectral traces, and provides preprocessing utilities for astrometric registration, background subtraction, and cosmic ray flagging. A new set of Jupyter notebook tutorials guides users through recommended end-to-end workflows for WFC3/IR, WFC3/UVIS full-frame, and WFC3/UVIS subarray observations. Review the full documentation. Development continues to refine the package's capabilities, including planned support for ACS/SBC prism data. See the accompanying newsletter article for details.

COS2035: Extending COS far-ultraviolet operations through the 2030s

The primary life-limiting factor for the far-ultraviolet (FUV) detector of the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) is gain sag, the natural degradation of detector response due to cumulative photon exposure. This effect is mitigated by increasing the detector's high voltage and shifting target spectra to new, more pristine locations on the detector, called lifetime positions (LPs), as described in this newsletter article.

Building on the LP7 and LP10 lifetime positions enabled in Cycle 33, the COS team has developed COS2035, a comprehensive strategy that extends COS FUV operations through the 2030s. The strategy combines the existing COS2025 rules, four technical breakthroughs developed since 2020 that opened new detector real estate and new LP placement options, and two usage policies introduced in Cycles 32 and 33 that preserve detector lifetime: a cap at the maximum achievable signal-to-noise ratio per target and a 2% per-program lifetime usage cap at any single lifetime position. Under this strategy, LP11 is planned to be enabled in Cycle 34 for the G140L grating, and LP12 in Cycle 35 for the G130M/1291 mode. The strategy is documented in COS ISR 2026-04 and the July 2026 COS STAN and ensures that COS retains its unique FUV spectroscopic capabilities into the 2030s and beyond.

Single guide star guiding becomes the default for qualifying imaging observations

Hubble relies on its Fine Guidance Sensors (FGSs) to achieve the milliarcsecond pointing stability that underpins virtually all its science, typically using two of the three FGSs simultaneously during science exposures. To extend the life of the FGSs and maximize both the observing success rate and scheduling flexibility, qualifying imaging observations will be scheduled with single guide star (1GS) guiding by default beginning in Cycle 34, with the telescope roll under gyro control.

Observations qualify if they use ACS/WFC or WFC3 imaging with all exposures shorter than 1,001 seconds, excluding moving targets and spatial scans. Since fall 2024, all Snapshot (SNAP) program exposures have been executed under 1GS guiding, improving the SNAP success rate while providing a growing dataset to evaluate 1GS performance. A comprehensive evaluation of these data shows no perceptible impact on image quality, as described in the WFC3 ISR 2025-07, the ACS ISR 2026-04, and the April 2026 newsletter article. GO observers who believe their science requires two guide stars (2GS) may request an exception by submitting a written scientific justification by August 3, 2026. Beginning in Cycle 35, 2GS will be requested as a special requirement in the Phase I proposal.

B-Side Operations flight software installed

The failure of the Side B electronics of Hubble's Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) system in 2021 left the observatory operating on a single set of electronics. Teams at GSFC and STScI have since developed a software solution, called B-Side Operations (BSO), that restores redundancy to this critical system, as described in this newsletter article.

Following successful end-to-end system-level testing this spring, the BSO flight software was installed on the telescope's main computer in June 2026 and on the science instrument computer and the science instruments in July 2026. The software resides onboard in a disabled state, ready to be enabled if ever needed. BSO restores Hubble's operations to a fully redundant and resilient configuration, supporting continued scientific productivity into the 2030s and beyond.

Read ongoing Hubble news updates.

James Webb Space Telescope at STScI

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

Webb begins another cycle of incredible science

Notifications for JWST Cycle 5 were sent to the scientific community on March 13, awarding 254 programs and a total of 8,009 observing hours. The oversubscription rate for compliant submissions was 13:1 by time and 11:1 by proposals. As always, these programs span the entire field of astronomy, with significant time going into the high-redshift universe and exoplanets (27% each). These topics are also prominent in the 15 Large and Treasury programs; that pool also includes one solar system program, four programs exploring stars and stellar populations, and two programs targeting nearby galaxies. For full details of the proposal selection see this article. Together, these programs will build on Webb’s groundbreaking discoveries, tackle unresolved scientific questions, and open new frontiers for exploration with the observatory.

The Cycle 6 Call for Proposals was released on July 20, with a deadline of 8 p.m. Eastern on September 30. Among the new capabilities being offered are superstripe readout for Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) Bright-Object Time Series and Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) imaging (enabling observations of brighter targets in each mode), new Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) subarray and readout options with improved performance, and MIRI Wide-Field Slitless Spectroscopy (WFSS) in coordinated and pure parallel observing. STScI is also introducing a new Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) Precursor Science initiative to encourage JWST observations that will help guide HWO’s science cases and early development.

Improvements to the calibration pipeline

As with earlier releases of the Webb calibration pipeline, the May release included significant improvements to the science data from all four of Webb’s scientific instruments. Among these are a dramatic reduction in residual 1/f noise for the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) Single Object Slitless Spectroscopy (SOSS) mode, and a significant mitigation for resampling artifacts when observing unresolved point sources with the MIRI and NIRSpec Integral Field Units (IFUs). While the 1/f noise and undersampling are intrinsic to the instruments, they can fortunately be addressed through sophisticated post-processing algorithms.

JWST has many years of fantastic science ahead

In July 2027, Webb moves from “prime” to “extended” mission and will be subject to the 2028 NASA Senior Review of operating missions. This programmatic transition should be seamless for the scientific community, with no discernible changes in impact, productivity, demand, or support. Webb’s operational lifetime is expected to extend into the 2040s, given the current performance, margins, and redundancies for the spacecraft, propellant, mirror, instruments, and critical subsystems. Webb will continue to offer new capabilities for many years to come, as inherent observatory complexities are leveraged to enable new science, the characterization of the observatory and instruments improve, and the scientific landscape evolves. We should be maximizing the science return from this powerfully complex machine for many years to come, broadening its reach into new areas of discovery.

JWST Users Committee

The JWST Users Committee (JSTUC) met at STScI on May 6 and 7. Presentations are available on the JSTUC website.

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

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope at STScI

By Karoline Gilbert and Ori Fox

Roman is on track for launch August 30, 2026, eight months ahead of schedule, with a primary five-year mission starting in 2027. The integrated observatory arrived at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for final prelaunch preparations in June. Follow along with Roman’s preparations for launch with NASA’s Roman blog.

The Cycle 1 Call for Proposals closed March 17, 2026, and the 118 approved programs were announced by the Roman Science Support Center in June. Five of the approved programs are General Astrophysics Surveys, which will use a combined total of 1,456 hours of telescope time.

STScI has been focused on preparing to participate in Roman commissioning and early operations, and supporting the science community in preparation to use Roman data.

STScI is ready for Roman’s August 30 launch, commissioning, and early operations

STScI staff completed the integration and testing of our Science Operations Center (SOC) flight build, verifying and validating that our SOC software systems, science data products, and processes are ready to support Roman launch and commissioning. Staff continued development to extend the functionality of our systems, including providing support for SOC Data Releases, additional development of catalogs and other data products, and updates to the Roman Research Nexus.

STScI scientists, developers, and operations staff continued to work iteratively with mission partners on full five-year observing plans that refined the implementation of Roman’s community-defined surveys and incorporated calibration programs. In the near term, the approved PI-led General Astrophysics Surveys and the Coronagraph Instrument demonstration program targets will also be incorporated into the five-year observing plan, yielding Roman’s first baselined, five-year mission plan ahead of entry into science operations. STScI staff participated in multiple mission readiness tests that were designed to test commissioning workflows and procedures, and train staff for the demands of supporting commissioning.

The Roman Science User Panel wants to hear from you

The Roman Science User Panel (RSUP) held its first meeting in May 2026. Topics included the Cycle 1 Call for Proposals, community feedback from a survey of investigators about Cycle 1 proposals, Roman science community engagement, future communication with the science community as Roman approaches and enters science operations, and community expectations.

The RSUP is charged with representing the community and providing advice to the Roman Project at GSFC, and Science Centers at STScI and Caltech/IPAC on all aspects of Roman operations that impact users. The user panel provides a structured avenue through which Roman users can provide unsolicited feedback about their experiences. The RSUP chairs are Casey Papovich (Texas A&M University) and Sabrina Stierwalt (Occidental College). Reach out to them, or any other RSUP member, with any feedback about the Roman Project and partners. The RSUP will convene for an interim meeting on August 19, 2026, and a second full meeting January 26 to 27, 2027.

STScI is reviewing the recent feedback from a survey sent to investigators asking about their Cycle 1 proposal experiences, and evaluating what can be addressed within the first year after launch.

Roman's Data Release strategy takes shape

The Roman mission is developing its Data Release strategy in partnership with representative members of the community through a formal working group to support a broad range of scientific goals. Starting on day one of science operations, Roman will provide immediate public access to prompt science products following observations, enabling rapid scientific analysis and early exploration. These products will be available on the MAST archive and Roman Research Nexus. As calibrations and pipelines are improved, prompt products will be updated when appropriate.

As data continues to be collected for each survey, periodic Data Releases will deliver uniformly reprocessed datasets that ensure consistency and more comprehensive data products that are ideal for thorough analysis. This two-tiered approach is designed to balance rapid access with long-term data quality and consistency, while minimizing the need for independent large-scale reprocessing. Improvements in calibrations and the pipeline will continue throughout the entire mission. Each Data Release will build upon the last, enabling new discoveries and more powerful science.

Helping scientists prepare to use Roman data

The Roman Research Nexus officially launched in January 2026. This cloud-based science platform provides a pre-configured computing environment, pre-installed software, the ability to upload your own software, and real-time collaboration tools for working in teams, as described in this article. Tutorial Jupyter notebooks and workflows provide instruction and a starting point for learning to simulate, explore, or analyze Roman data. STScI staff continued to develop new tutorials and science workflows, add simulated datasets for each of the Core Community Surveys, and expand Nexus capabilities. Areas under active development include enhanced compute options; simpler MAST archive to analysis integration; and improved data access, storage, and management. STScI staff hosted a Nexus workshop at the 247th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in January 2026.

Additional Nexus trainings, as well as sessions about other topics, were covered in the ongoing Ready, Set, Roman! Training Series. Inaugurated in November 2025, this suite of one-hour webinars is designed to enable the community to take full advantage of Roman’s capabilities. It offers live hands-on demonstrations of Roman tools and simulated datasets, with time for questions for Roman staff. Recordings of past webinars are available on YouTube. Trainings held in January, February, and March covered using the Roman Research Nexus, Data Products and Tools from the Project Infrastructure Teams (PITs), and the range of tools and resources available to support the Cycle 1 Call for Proposals. The series is anticipated to return toward the end of 2026 in support of Roman’s entry into science operations and the Cycle 2 Call for Proposals.

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 Jason Tumlinson

The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) will be the first telescope designed specifically to search for signs of life on planets orbiting other stars, while also rewriting astronomy textbooks as a super-Hubble. This year, the mission has gained significant momentum scientifically and programmatically.

Community engagement

The year opened with a strong HWO presence at the 247th AAS meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. A special session hosted by the Community Science and Instrument Team (CSIT) updated attendees about current activities and future plans, and representatives from NASA Headquarters and the HWO Technology Maturation Project Office (TMPO) shared the status of the mission’s development to date, avenues for future involvement, and plans for next steps. CSIT also laid out transformative science cases that guide the observatory's design and defined the innovative instrument suite needed to pursue them. The CSIT has also maintained updates through the virtual seminars hosted by the HWO Science Interest Group (SIG), including talks by CSIT and TMPO members.

HWO25 proceedings published

A major milestone for the HWO community science effort arrived this spring with the publication of the HWO25 Proceedings Part I: Community Science Case Development Documents, edited by Janice Lee, Jessica Noviello, Steph LaMassa, and Marc Postman. These proceedings grew out of the inaugural HWO25 conference co-organized by STScI and held in Washington, D.C., in July 2025. These science cases cover the full scope of modern astrophysics and establish the detailed science program that HWO will enable.

Instrument concept studies are underway

On the technology side, NASA announced plans to solicit proposals for U.S.-led HWO instrument concept studies. These studies will support teams executing science, engineering, and technology investigations to inform TMPO as it continues to develop the mission concept, with NASA seeking innovative approaches combining instrument capabilities — full instruments or subsystems — and ways to improve or simplify previously studied instrument designs. In support of the solicitation, TMPO hosted a hybrid pre-proposal workshop in Washington, D.C., in May, where attendees heard about others' interests and began forming teams. TMPO presentations about driving science cases, current instrument concepts, and ongoing technology development were recorded and made publicly available.

Looking ahead

The rest of 2026 promises more action. CSIT and TMPO will continue their science activity and approach the definition of Level 1 requirements for the mission. The European community will host their first major HWO conference outside Paris in late November and early December. This year, NASA’s domestic industrial partners have begun their major technology development programs, and we expect that instrument studies will be selected.

HWO is underway! There are an array of regularly updated resources available on the community HWO website, which includes a detailed science page and a new technology page, free resources on a new multimedia page, dedicated news and events pages, as well as details about how to get involved. We invite you to follow along.

Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST)

By Susan Mullally

MAST continues to be used to great effect by the astronomical community. Staff members recently published an article about the impact of MAST and its missions, which has been accepted for publication in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (PASP). The article includes 30 years of publication statistics for MAST missions. We found that the publication rate over the last 50 years shows that most MAST missions achieved very high productivity during their in-service lifetimes, and continue to attract users for years or decades afterward. Annual citations, a measure of impact on research, are robust for most missions, with citations extending over more than a decade.

Throughout the year, staff who support MAST are constantly looking for ways to make finding and exploring MAST’s data easier. At STScI, we combine the expertise of software engineers with scientists who are familiar with our missions as well as conducting research with these data to help develop the most valuable tools for analysis. 

In the first half of 2026, MAST released a new catalog schema browser that works from a website or our science platforms, offering users easy access to the rich metadata associated with the catalogs we host. The improved schema browser for catalogs will be essential for scientists needing to work with Roman catalog data as well as MAST’s other missions. Catalogs for PanSTARRS and the TESS Input Catalog are currently available, with more planned.

Enhancements to the mission search forms at MAST, like HST and JWST, include preview images, links to Jdaviz Imviz for deeper dives, and an improved subscription service. (Find more missions.) The previews on Imviz allow users to determine whether the data they have found is of value before spending resources downloading and analyzing the data.

Soon, MAST will deliver sky background images on our mission search pages, allowing users to place observation footprints on top of zoomable background images from various surveys using Aladin Lite. We will serve these backgrounds from a public, cloud-based repository.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Legacy Archive Spectra were also fully ingested at MAST and are available through MAST.

Expect more releases: We are working to apply the new tools to all the telescope data MAST holds for consistent user experiences

See everything MAST offers, including our latest news updates.

News and Public Outreach at STScI

By Quyen Hart 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 science community members who are developing the Habitable Worlds Observatory concept. We also use discoveries from across the field of astrophysics to enable science learning in informal education venues. Everything we release is free and may be used in any presentation or public outreach activity.

In the first half of 2026, the OPO news team published 34 press releases sharing groundbreaking discoveries and new images from Hubble and Webb, as well as science that will be enabled by Roman, and STScI announcements. Notable releases included Hubble’s examination of Cloud 9, a new type of cosmic object; Webb’s measurements of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, suggesting a cold origin billions of years ago; and how a Hubble survey will help interpret future Roman data. In total, these releases resulted in almost 7,800 articles and other mentions in worldwide media outlets. OPO also provided Spanish translations for the Webb and Roman press releases. 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.

Over the past six months, OPO has been developing an online platform to create and deliver content that transforms space telescope imagery and data into information-rich, interactive experiences. This platform, called STORI (Space Telescope Online Repository for Interactives), has already begun enhancing OPO’s news releases and suite of outreach products. The STORI platform debuted with Webb’s fourth anniversary press release, where STORI was used to deliver responsive deep zooms of Webb’s mid-infrared image of Centaurus A and an interactive image tour to showcase key features of this galaxy.

Our scientists continue to host virtual public talks through the Deep Space Dialogues series, recently speaking to scientists about little red dots and black holes, brown dwarfs, and the formation of stellar systems. OPO has engaged the public through various free events, including Webb events at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, the Johns Hopkins University Physics Fair in Baltimore, and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Our outreach teams produced stunning videos focusing on how Webb uncovers star formation, what Webb learns from light, and how Roman will answer questions about dark energy. We also produced outreach materials focused on our current understanding of the TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets, regular “News from the Universe” videos hosted on ViewSpace, along with posters of Webb images of Saturn and the Helix Nebula.

OPO staff are also actively contributing to the upcoming nationwide celebration of Roman’s launch, which is currently scheduled for late August 2026. We helped teams at organizations around the country prepare by producing a stunning, information-packed Roman outreach slide deck — a valuable resource for organizations seeking to engage the public. It is similar to a slide deck released when Webb launched, which led to hundreds of successful events. Our team also created and published a Roman launch resource page on the NASA’s Universe of Learning website, and hosted webinars for informal educators to learn more about the Roman mission.

OPO supported communication efforts from both STScI and AURA to inform the astronomy community about the science driving NASA’s next flagship astrophysics mission, the Habitable Worlds Observatory. These efforts include major updates to the community’s website, and creating scientifically accurate graphics and videos that may be used by scientists in science talks.

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

• 30 Years of Strategic Director’s Discretionary Time (DDT) Programs
• Hubble Slitlessutils 2.0: A Forward-Modeling Python Replacement for aXe
• Continuing to Map Hubble’s Future Science Priorities
• Spring 2026 Meeting of the Hubble Space Telescope Users Committee (STUC)
• Pushing Science Forward with Hubble and Webb: ‘Enriching the Universe’ Conference Recap
• Extending the Lifetime of the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) Far-Ultraviolet Channel
• Restoring Redundancy: B-Side Operations on Hubble’s Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) Computer
• Single Star Guiding: Extending the Lifetime of Hubble’s Fine Guidance Sensors (FGSs)
• Building a Roadmap for Hubble Science into the 2030s
• JWST Cycle 5 Proposal Selection
• JWST Cycle 5 Science Highlights
• STScI’s 2025 in Review
• Hands-on Hubble: A New Video Tutorial Series for WFC3
• Roman: Delivering Data That Unlocks Discovery
• Join the Roman Research Nexus: Plug into a Full Suite of Resources and Simulated Data
• Fall 2025 Meeting of Hubble 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.

Join or Revisit STScI Events