It seems like only yesterday (but, jeez, it was 19 years ago) that the Hubble telescope was carried into orbit by the space shuttle Discovery. Now, the world was told, we would get a proper look at quasars, black holes and the famed dilithium mines of Rigel IX. "I'll be drunk with excitement," one astro-physicist predicted. "We'll be looking at things people have never seen before!"
Four years from now, however, Hubble will be old hat. The James Webb Space Telescope will be bigger, more powerful and, of course, more expensive.
If all goes to plan, it will reveal the very first galaxies or clusters of stars that formed some 13.5bn years ago. Andrew Luck-Baker meets the scientists building it in The New Galileos (9pm, Radio 4).
Tim Boon, meanwhile, is telling the story of Percy Smith, whose film of a fly a century ago began Britain's proud line of natural-history documentaries.The Balancing Bluebottle (11.30am, Radio 4) inevitably features David Attenborough, but also visits the house in London where Smith worked to combine the "powder of instruction" with the "jam of entertainment".