In the nearly four years since its launch, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has become the world's most powerful engine of astrophysical discovery, busying itself with ambitious observational programs to reveal astonishing new details of early galaxies, potentially habitable exoplanets, strange solar system objects and more. Such scientific bounty is the ever-growing return on a hefty investment, as JWST required three decades of development and some $10 billion to reach the launchpad.
Now, the telescope's next year of science has been revealed. Known as Cycle 4 and running from July 2025 to June 2026, the campaign features 274 programs selected from 2,377 proposals submitted from scientists in 39 countries. Its highlights include potentially transformative studies of asteroids in the outer solar system, rocky worlds orbiting white dwarf stars, and mysterious "little red dot" galaxies in the early universe—to name but a few of the myriad newfound targets for the telescope's wandering eye.
But just as this magnificent telescope seems to be truly hitting its stride, uncertainty is growing about its future. Like most federal agencies, NASA is feeling the pinch from budget cuts enacted or proposed by the Trump administration, and support for JWST operations is not immune. Some of the "winners" of Cycle 4 consequently worry that potential funding shortfalls could prevent them from fulfilling the scientific objectives underpinning their successful proposals. And fears are spreading within the broader space-science community that even more science-sacrificing budgetary pain is in store.
As the planetary scientist Paul Byrne states in our top story, JWST is "up and running, it's been fully commissioned, and it's returning incredible science… [it's] a marquee flagship program. If we have to cut at all, it seems like an absolute 'own goal.'"
—Lee Billings
