John Mather

What comes next ? All the tools are working, better than we hoped and promised. Scientific observations, proposed years ago, are being made as we speak, we want to know : Where did we come from ? What happened after the big bang to make galaxies and stars and black holes ? We have predictions and guesses, but astronomy is an observational science, full of surprises.

We'll look at our own solar system with new infrared eyes, looking for chemical traces of our history, and tracking down mysteries like Jupiter's Great Red Spot, composition of the ocean under the ice of Europa, and the atmosphere of Saturn's giant moon Titan.

We want to know, how did we get here from the Big Bang ? we want to look at those first galaxies growing. There are dark areas of dust skewing our view of those earliest times when the stars are growing, but we can see them with infrared.