'We Still Need Hubble': Why NASA's Revolutionary Space Telescope Isn't Dead Yet

CNET spoke to the systems and deputy program manager for the Hubble Space Telescope at Lockheed Martin, who remembers the first 1995 "deep field" image from the Hubble Space Telescope - taken over 10 days and revealing 3,000 galaxies. But he also remembers just how revolutionary it was. "To look at a 'dark' sliver of the sky and see so many stars and galaxies really drives home how much we still have to learn about the universe." Looking back, that was only from 340 miles above our atmosphere - not the million miles from Earth travelled by the Webb Space Telescope (which also scours the universe "for cosmic bits emanating luminescence elusive to human eyes, otherwise known as infrared light.") Yet while this has been a glorious month for astronomy, "We will absolutely still need Hubble," said Cornell University astronomer Nikole Lewis. "In fact, I'm in the process of trying to put together a budget for a large treasury program on Hubble." Lewis is after something Hubble has but JWST lacks. She studies exoplanets and intends to use visible and ultraviolet light wavelengths to decode clouds and hazes of foreign worlds - the type of light JWST isn't sensitive to. "There's a lot of important information at those wavelengths." Despite JWST's clout, Hubble is also still the top candidate for scrutinizing galaxies moving along the X or Y axis, rather than the Z axis. "While galactic motion 'toward' and 'away' from Earth is very easy to measure with redshift," a JWST specialty, "'side to side' motion is harder," Caplan said. In truth, this unique Hubble power turns out to be how we realized a pretty massive detail about galaxies. Many of them are on a crash course right now. By staring at Andromeda over the years - the galaxy that Hubble's namesake used as evidence in 1923 to prove our universe extends beyond the Milky Way - and measuring how its light on individual pixels transferred from one to the next, JWST's predecessor showed us that this galaxy isn't just orbiting ours. "They really will collide," Caplan explained. Would JWST have caught that? Nonetheless, all of this is to say that as JWST continues to flood the internet with colorful depictions of space's outer reaches, we should remember that it isn't Hubble's replacement. JWST is its successor. It'll work in tandem with Hubble and wouldn't exist in a world without it.... And though the James Webb Space Telescope's story began with a bang, we ought not to let Hubble's end with a whimper. "They're not shutting Hubble down," said Dave Meyer, a Northwestern University professor focused on Hubble discoveries. "We still think that's about a decade away." And that systems and deputy program manager for the Hubble Space Telescope at Lockheed Martin also shared another part of its legacy: inspiring the next generation of astronomers. "I grew up being fascinated by the Shuttle program and was mesmerized watching the astronauts service Hubble. "That was definitely part of my inspiration to become an aerospace engineer."

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