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The Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST) is an 8– to 16.8–meter UV-optical-NIR space telescope proposed by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). If launched, ATLAST would be a replacement and successor for the HST, with the ability to obtain spectroscopic and imaging observations of astronomical objects in the ultraviolet, optical, and infrared wavelengths, but with substantially better resolution than either HST or the planned James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Like JWST, ATLAST would be launched to the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point. ATLAST is envisioned as a flagship mission of the 2025–2035 period, designed to determine whether there is life elsewhere in the galaxy. It would attempt to accomplish this by searching for "biosignatures" (such as molecular oxygen, ozone, water, and methane) in the spectra of terrestrial exoplanets. The backronym that the project currently uses, 'ATLAST', is in fact a pun. It refers to the time taken to decide on a true, visible-light, successor for the Hubble Space Telescope. However, it is expected that, as the project progresses, a new name would be chosen for the mission.