... that will be missed. It was interesting seeing a Chandra image side by side with a Hubble image of the same region or object. I hope they find a way of saving it.

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NASA's new Spitzer Space Telescope views the universe in the infrared, akin to night-vision goggles, as will the planned James Webb Space Telescope, tentatively slated for launch in 2011. Even if Webb goes up -- and that is not certain yet -- it won't see visible light.

Meanwhile, the two new Hubble instruments are already built. The Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph cost a combined $167 million and would have provided unprecedented peeks into the formation of the cosmos, astronomers say. The camera is nearly ready at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and the spectrograph, which splits and analyzes light, is ready and waiting at Ball Aerospace Technology Corp. in Boulder, Colo.

They would have made Hubble 10 times more capable of examining the early universe, making Hubble's final years "the best ever," Beckwith said. "If you liked Hubble up to now you would have loved it after Servicing Mission 4."

No one knows what will become of the two instruments, but it is unlikely they could be adapted for use on any other telescope.

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