Following in the tradition of other NASA missions like Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope, the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is a future NASA FUV-NIR flagship that will revolutionize multiple areas of astrophysics. A challenging next frontier of astronomy and planetary science is to directly image temperate Earth-sized in planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars, measure their spectra, and search them for signs of life. HWO will be the first observatory designed to tackle the question “Are we alone?”. An observatory capable of addressing this ambitious question will be the most powerful telescope NASA has ever launched, enabling HWO to study an astonishing range of targets across the universe. This talk will provide an overview of science progress on HWO so far, centered on the search for life, and with a look towards next steps.
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