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2023 Annual Report

Long horizontal banner is split into five sections. From left to right: Hubble image of M76, a multi-colored planetary nebula made up of two translucent orange and blue orbs attached by a white band in the center. A mosaic of mainly black-and-white astronomical images, with a few slightly larger images representing MAST missions. Webb image of interacting galaxies Arp 142, looking like a semi-translucent egg at bottom left and a large penguin at center right. An illustration represents the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, showing two figures looking at a spiral galaxy on a large screen. At far right, the cover is in shades of blue with illustrations of a Maryland blue crab and the Baltimore skyline in shades of gray. The cover includes text at top: expanding the frontiers of space astronomy, ’24 in review. The Space Telescope Science Institute logo is at bottom right.

2024 Featured Articles

Letter from the Director
Dr. Jennifer Lotz reflects on Webb’s top-tier science, Hubble’s outstanding scientific productivity, and preparations for Roman.

Making Extraordinary Science Ordinary
The Hubble Space Telescope continued to guide discoveries with a “steady hand” and new pointing mode.

The Wow Factor
STScI staff continued to facilitate revolutionary science with Webb, going beyond previous boundaries of knowledge, efficiency, and excellence.

Centered on Community
Roman is a vastly different mission than previous NASA flagship missions. Learn how teams at the institute are preparing and building networks along the way.

Standing the Test of Time
Our staff continue to take a forward-thinking approach when it comes to preserving and accessing telescope data.

Making Great Strides
Staff in STScI’s Russell B. Makidon Optics Laboratory advanced experiments to demonstrate how we can image and characterize Earth-like exoplanets with a future space telescope that has a segmented mirror.

Where Data and People Meet
A team explains the highly collaborative Roman Research Nexus, including its future impact on science.

In the News
Revisit the biggest Hubble and Webb headlines of 2024.

Advancing Tools, Technologies, and Scientific Knowledge 
The hundreds of articles published by STScI staff in 2024 demonstrate the institute’s dedication to research supporting current and future exploration of the universe.

Paving Multiple Pathways to the Universe
Our public engagement staff took various approaches, previously practiced and new, to navigate to a shared goal: making astronomy accessible to all.

By the Numbers
Hubble and Webb are in high demand by the worldwide scientific community.

Download a Large-Scale Poster 

About the Annual Report Archive

Annual Report Archive

Want to know more about the institute’s missions, divisions, and initiatives? Filter by topic, year, or keyword to explore the institute’s accomplishments since 1999.

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  1. Letter from the Director

    2024 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    Dr. Jennifer Lotz reflects on Webb’s top-tier science, Hubble’s outstanding scientific productivity, and preparations for Roman.

    Head-and-shoulders portrait of STScI’s Director Jennifer Lotz, a woman with bob-length brown hair and brown eyes, who is smiling at the camera. She is dressed in a formal black jacket and red turtleneck sweater. The background is a portion of Webb’s near- and mid-infrared image of Digel Cloud 2, a region on the outskirts of the Milky Way galaxy, which contains a bright star cluster.

  3. The Wow Factor

    2024 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    STScI staff continued to facilitate revolutionary science with Webb, going beyond previous boundaries of knowledge, efficiency, and excellence.

    A young star-forming region is filled with wispy orange, red, and blue layers of gas and dust. The upper-left corner of the image is filled with mostly orange dust, and within that orange dust, there are several small red plumes of gas that extend from the top left to the bottom right, at the same angle. The center of the image is filled with mostly blue gas. At the center, there is one particularly bright star, that has an hourglass shadow above and below it. To the right of that is what looks like a vertical eye-shaped crevice with a bright star at the center. The gas to the right of the crevice is a darker orange. Small points of light are sprinkled across the field, brightest sources in the field have extensive eight-pointed diffraction spikes that are characteristic of the James Webb Space Telescope.

  4. Centered on Community

    2024 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    Roman is a vastly different mission than previous NASA flagship missions. Learn how teams at the institute are preparing and building networks along the way.

    Illustration shows galaxies and stars, of various sizes and colors, against the black background of space.

  5. Standing the Test of Time

    2024 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    Our staff continue to take a forward-thinking approach when it comes to preserving and accessing telescope data.

    Stars, galaxies, and rainbow-colored vertical lines are scattered across a solid black background. Most of the stars appear as small specks, but some have small diffraction spikes. The galaxies vary in size, shape, and detail. The rainbow-colored vertical lines are heaviest toward the center and top of the frame. Most of them are thin and clearly defined, but some are slightly thicker and brighter with a surrounding glow.

  6. Making Great Strides

    2024 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    Staff in STScI’s Russell B. Makidon Optics Laboratory advanced experiments to demonstrate how we can image and characterize Earth-like exoplanets with a future space telescope that has a segmented mirror.

    Illustration of a planet on the black background of space. Only a portion of the large planet is shown. The top portion of the planet is lit, while the rest is in shadow. The planet has an atmosphere, white clouds spread across the top, with some pink layers peeking out below them. The edges appear light purple.

  7. Where Data and People Meet

    2024 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    A team explains the highly collaborative Roman Research Nexus, including its future impact on science.

    An illustration showing multiple semi-transparent screens with data against a navy background with columns of faint zeroes and ones, binary code.

  8. In the News

    2024 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    Revisit the biggest Hubble and Webb headlines of 2024.

    Two spiral galaxies take the shape of a colorful beaded mask that sits above the nose. The galaxy at left, IC 2163, is smaller, taking up a little over a quarter of the view. The galaxy at right, NGC 2207, takes up half the view, with its spiral arms reaching the edges. IC 2163 has a bright orange core, with two prominent spiral arms that rotate counterclockwise and become straighter towards the ends, the left side extending almost to the edge. Its arms are a mix of pink, white, and blue, with an area that takes the shape of an eyelid appearing whitest. NGC 2207 has a very bright core. Overall, it appears to have larger, thicker spiral arms that spin counterclockwise. This galaxy also contains more and larger blue areas of star formation that poke out like holes from the pink spiral arms. In the middle, the galaxies’ arms appear to overlap. The edges show the black background of space, including extremely distant galaxies that look like orange and red smudges, and a few foreground stars.

  10. Paving Multiple Pathways to the Universe

    2024 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    Our public engagement staff took various approaches, previously practiced and new, to navigate to a shared goal: making astronomy accessible to all.

    A dense crowd of people on a racetrack gaze upward toward the sky. Most people are wearing eclipse glasses and are standing. Elements of the racetrack’s architecture are seen toward the left and right sides of the image, including a tall tower with glass windows. The sky is light blue with clouds.

  11. By the Numbers

    2024 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    Hubble and Webb are in high demand by the worldwide scientific community.

  13. Letter from the Interim Director

    2023 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    Dr. Nancy Levenson reflects on Hubble and Webb’s scientific discoveries, Roman’s milestones, and shares details about two new large observing programs. 

    Head-and-shoulders portrait of STScI’s Interim Director Nancy Levenson, a white woman with short brown hair and blue eyes, who is smiling at the camera. She is dressed in a formal black jacket and scoop neck top. The background is a portion of Hubble's image of Westerlund 2, a giant cluster of thousands of stars.

  14. Building an Ultraviolet Legacy

    2023 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    Hubble team members reflect on the completion of one of the telescope’s most ambitious observation programs and the impact it’s already having in astronomy.

    A horizontal image with colors ranging from blue at left to golden in the middle and red at the right. On the left, a bright blue star is illuminating surrounding clouds of gas, making the left third of the image appear blue. To the right of the bright star, a couple dozen fainter stars shine yellow. One of them has a fuzzy, golden arc above. At the center of the image, a brighter yellow star illuminates surrounding gas. It is partially obscured by dark streaks and clouds of dust, making it resemble the moon on a cloudy evening. The right side is noticeably darker than the rest, with the exception of a dramatic splash of red almost like a bug splat on a windshield. A handful of faint red stars also appear there.

  15. One for the Record Books

    2023 ANNUAL REPORT ARTICLE

    The institute and astronomy community began shifting from the thrill of Webb’s beginnings to the new reality of a successfully operating science mission.

    Webb’s view of the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex. Red dual opposing jets coming from young stars fill the darker top half of the image, while a glowing pale-yellow, cave-like structure is bottom center, tilted toward two o’clock, with a bright star at its center.