This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, we're going to answer second grader,

Nina Dolboski, who had a curious caterpillar question. But first, 28 years ago, astronauts on the

Space Shuttle Discovery gently released the Hubble Space Telescope HST into space. Geologist and astronaut Catherine Sullivan commemorated the moment

with a short speech as she floated in the shuttle.

We, again, as many others, have thought numerous times about the historical significance

that the advent of an observatory such as the HST would have and how it stands in comparison to the advances

of Galileo and even to the advances of Edwin Hubble's periods of observation.

It would be a few years, a few repair jobs later, before Hubble lived up to those comparisons,

but it eventually did gifting us with new views of the cosmos and wonders.

It wasn't even designed to study, like exoplanets.

But Hubble is getting up there in years.

In fact, this month is the 25th anniversary of the first repair mission to the Hubble,

and lots of new telescopes are wading in the wings or on the drawing boards,

like the James Webb Space Telescope and the W-First, plus a collection of others vying to be the next big thing in space telescopes.

So this hour, a tour of space science in the years to come, and the tools are going to do it with.

It may be a bumpy ride, though, because, as always, money and politics play a large role

in determining the future of space exploration.

So here to help us out is space geek Ryan Mandelbaum, science writer at Gizmodo.

Hey, Ira, how's everything going?

Oh, it's always great to be here.

And our question to our listeners is, let's ask our listeners to react, what's most

intriguing to you about space and the night sky? Where would you point a future telescope?

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