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An ultraviolet spectrometer that NASA plans to install on the Hubble Space
Telescope in 2002 will be 20 times as sensitive as the Space Telescope Imaging
Spectrograph installed earlier this year. The new Cosmic Origins Spectrometer
will probe 10 billion light years out into the Universe. James Green of the
University of Colorado at Boulder, who is heading the project, hopes it will
enable astronomers to “see back to the epoch of galaxy formation”, and watch
galaxies forming from balls of hot gas. He also hopes to be able to spot
ultraviolet light that hot helium ions emitted as they captured their first
electrons.