![]() ![]() So, we've provided a new way to solve this conundrum. “Now we have James Webb, we can see the full column all the way to the surface where the rover is. “The big conundrum has been that the rovers on the surface and the observational data have left a gap between zero and 10 kilometers,” Giuliano Liuzzi, an atmospheric spectroscopist and the lead investigator on the project, said at a press conference, as reported by ’s Robert Lea. Now, scientists are hopeful that Webb will be able to help. The presence of methane, a potential marker of life in Mars’s past, has been particularly tricky to confirm using other instruments. ![]() The telescope may also be able to help astronomers look for trace gases in the Martian atmosphere, including hydrogen chloride, methane and other chemical compounds. The spectrum, created using data from all six high-resolution spectroscopy modes of the telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), provides astronomers with information about Mars’ icy clouds, dust, surface rocks and atmospheric composition. Webb also captured its first near-infrared spectrum of Mars, which shows “the subtle variations in brightness between hundreds of different wavelengths representative of the planet as a whole,” per NASA. Photo courtesy of NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Mars JWST/GTO team James Webb Space Telescope's first near-infrared spectrum of Mars They also show variations in temperature at different latitudes and times of day, revealing warm regions where the Sun was almost directly overhead, as well as cooler areas in the northern hemisphere and near Mars’ polar regions. The image was released to commemorate 20 years of the European Space Agency's (ESA. The images depict surface features such as dust layers, craters and dark spots, including the Hellas Basin, Syrtis Major and Huygens Crater. A stunning new image shows Mars in an entirely new light, revealing intricate details of the Martian surface. The telescope’s first images of Mars, captured using its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) at two different wavelengths, show an area of the planet’s eastern hemisphere. “The fact that, when we opened the images and when we got the spectra, we actually could get the data and they were good data, it was exciting,” says Sara Faggi, an astrophysicist working on the project for NASA, to New Scientist ’s Alex Wilkins. To get around this issue, scientists used very short exposures and only measured some of the light that reached Webb’s instruments. Webb’s images provide insights that help complement data gathered by the other telescopes, rovers and orbiters that are studying Mars.īecause Mars is so close and so bright-and because Webb is so sensitive-researchers had to employ special observing techniques to avoid what’s known as detector saturation, a phenomenon caused by too much infrared light that ‘blinds’ the sensors. From its vantage point, Webb can at once observe Martian processes that occur at various times of day, and it will help researchers study short-term phenomena like seasonal changes, weather and dust storms, per NASA. Webb, which launched in December 2021 and is located roughly one million miles away from Earth (1.6 million kilometers), was able to capture the sunlit side of the Red Planet that was facing the telescope. The telescope captured its first images and spectra of the Red Planet on September 5, according to NASA, which is collaborating with scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA) on the James Webb project. But with a few careful adjustments, the high-tech telescope was recently able to turn its attention toward a much closer and brighter object in the night sky: Mars. “I’m excited to see Mars as it is now - as close to a martian ‘now’ as we can possibly get!”īut haven’t we seen images of Mars before? Yes, but not live, the ESA said.Scientists designed the James Webb Space Telescope to be able to detect faint light from distant parts of the universe. “Normally, we see images from Mars and know that they were taken days before,” said James Godfrey, spacecraft operations manager at ESA’s mission control center in Darmstadt, Germany, in a statement. Updates will also be available at ESA’s Twitter account and the hashtag #MarsLIVE, the agency said. While it won’t be truly live, there will be a new image about every 50 seconds of that hour, the agency said. Central European Time, or noon ET Friday. You can watch the stream on ESA’s YouTube channel for an hour starting at 6 p.m. The event is celebrating the 20 th anniversary of the launch of the agency’s Mars Express - a mission to take three-dimensional images of the planet’s surface to see it in more complete detail. Rushing rivers may have raced across ancient Mars NASA's Perseverance Mars rover captured this mosaic of a hill nicknamed "Pinestand." Scientists think the tall sedimentary layers stacked on top of one another here could have been formed by a deep, fast-moving river. ![]()
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