On July 8, NASA awarded two firms a contract to develop competing designs for the Next Generation Space Telescope, a long-term project intended to study the Universe during a period astronomers know next to nothing about.

Scientists learn about the Universes past by detecting and analyzing the radiation given off billions of years ago from remote galaxies. And they have a pretty good understanding of the Universe both at its early stages after the big bang and its recent past.

But todays telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, cannot detect the remote radiation given off by galaxies during this in-between period from when the Universe was about a million years old to when it was a few billion years old.

Two teams of scientists and engineers one led by TRW Inc., the other by Lockheed Martin will now try to design a telescope capable of detecting faint traces of this radiation, which exists the form of infrared-range light waves.

The teams will have two to three years to develop their designs, after which NASA will pick one for development. NASA hopes to launch the telescope in 2008.