HST will have an operational lifetime extending to 2010 and two further shuttle servicing missions are planned to install three completely new instruments and to cool and revive NICMOS. The two new imagers (ACS and WFC3) will provide a significant increase in the sensitivity and sky coverage over the current capabilities of WFPC2 and NICMOS. The final instrument for HST, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) is also designed to give higher sensitivity than the STIS UV capabilities. I will outline the new instrument characteristics, how they will improve HST's discovery power and how large ground-based facilities now compare with optical/NIR science from space. A brief outline of the current status of the NGST project, including baseline designs, expected launch schedule and proposed instrument suite will be given.