Artemis 1 Mission

Artemis 1 will be the first desegregated test of NASA’s deep space exploration systems: the Orion spacecraft, Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and the ground systems at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first in a series of progressively complex missions, Artemis 1 will be an uncrewed flight test that will provide a foundation for human deep space exploration, and demonstrate our commitment and capability to extend human existence to the Moon and beyond.

In this flight, the spacecraft will launch on the most powerful rocket in the world and fly farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown. It will travel 280,000 miles(450,616 kilometers) from Earth, thousands of miles beyond the Moon throughout about a four to the six-week mission. Orion will stay in space longer than any ship for astronauts has done without docking to a space station and return home faster and hotter than ever before.

During Artemis I, Orion will venture thousands of miles beyond the moon during an approximately four to the six-week mission.
Credits: NASA

Leaving Earth

SLS and Orion will take off from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s updated spaceport at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The SLS rocket is designed for missions beyond low-Earth orbit carrying crew or cargo to the Moon and far away, and will produce 8.8 million pounds(3.99 million kilograms or 39.13 million newtons)  of thrust during liftoff and ascent to loft a vehicle weighing nearly six million pounds(2.72 million kilograms) to orbit. The spacecraft is propelled by a pair of five-segment boosters and four RS-25 engines, the rocket will reach the period of greatest atmospheric force within ninety seconds. After jettisoning the boosters, service module panels, and launch abort system, the core stage engines will shut down and the core stage will separate from the spacecraft.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket with the Orion spacecraft aboard is seen atop the mobile launcher at Launch Pad 39B, Monday, Aug. 29, 2022, as the Artemis I launch teams loaded more than 700,000 gallons of cryogenic propellants including liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.
Credits: NASA

As the spacecraft makes an orbit of Earth, it will deploy its solar arrays and the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) will give Orion the big push needed to leave Earth’s orbit and travel toward the Moon. From there, Orion will separate from the ICPS within about two hours after launch. The ICPS will then deploy several small satellites, known as CubeSats, to perform several experiments and technology demonstrations.

Orion Spacecraft
Credits: NASA

On to the Moon

As Orion continuously moves on its path from Earth orbit to the Moon, it will be propelled by a service module provided by the European Space Agency, which will supply the spacecraft’s main propulsion system and power as well as house air and water for astronauts on future missions. Orion will pass through the Van Allen radiation belts, and fly past the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite constellation, and above communication satellites in Earth orbit. Orion will switch from NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellites system and communicate through the Deep Space Network, to talk with mission control in Houston. From here, Orion will continue to demonstrate its unique design to navigate, communicate, and operate in a deep space environment.

The outbound trip to the Moon will take several days, during which time engineers will estimate the spacecraft’s systems and, as needed, correct its path. Orion will fly about 62 miles (100 km) above the surface of the Moon, and then use the Moon’s gravitational force to propel Orion into a new deep retrograde, or opposite, orbit about 40,000 miles (70,000 km) from the Moon.

The spacecraft will stay in that orbit for approximately six days to collect data and allow mission controllers to evaluate the performance of the spacecraft. During this period, Orion will travel in a direction around the Moon retrograde from the direction the Moon travels around Earth.

Artemis 1 trajectory map
Credits: NASA

Return and Reentry

Orion will do another close flyby that takes the spacecraft within about 60 miles of the Moon’s surface for its return trip to Earth. The spacecraft will use another precisely timed engine firing of the European-provided service module in conjunction with the Moon’s gravity to accelerate back toward Earth. This maneuver will set the spacecraft on its trajectory back toward Earth to enter our planet’s atmosphere traveling at 25,000 mph (11 kilometers per second), producing temperatures of approximately 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius) faster and hotter than Orion experienced during its 2014 flight test.

After about four to six weeks and a total distance traveled exceeding 1.3 million miles(2.09 million kilometers), the mission will end with a test of Orion’s capability to return safely to the Earth as the spacecraft makes a precision landing within eyesight of the recovery ship off the coast of Baja, California. Following splashdown, Orion will remain powered for some time as divers from the U.S. Navy and operations teams from NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems approach in small boats from the waiting recovery ship. The divers will briefly scrutinize the spacecraft for hazards and hook up tending and tow lines, and then engineers will tow the capsule into the good deck of the recovery ship to bring the spacecraft home.

An expanded view of the Orion spacecraft and its components.

Credits: NASA

Future Missions

With this first exploration mission, NASA is leading the next steps of human exploration into deep space where astronauts will build and begin testing the systems near the Moon needed for lunar surface missions and exploration to other destinations farther from Earth, including Mars. The second flight will take the crew on a different trajectory and test Orion’s critical systems with humans aboard. The SLS rocket will evolve from an initial configuration capable of sending more than 26 metric tons to the Moon, to a final configuration that can send at least 45 metric tons.  Together, Orion, SLS, and the ground systems at Kennedy will be able to meet the most challenging crew and cargo mission needs in deep space.

Future exploration missions with crew aboard Orion will assemble and dock with a Gateway. NASA and its partners will use the gateway for deep-space operations including missions to and on the Moon with decreasing reliance on the Earth. Using lunar orbit, we will gain the experience necessary to extend human exploration farther into the solar system than ever before.

Humanity’s First Visit to a Star

NASA's historic Parker Solar Probe mission is the latest solar mission and it is able to revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other planets. Parker Solar Probe travels through the Sun’s atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions to provide humanity with the closest-ever observations of a star.

An artist's concept of NASA's Parker Solar Probe observing the Sun.
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

Journey to the Sun

Parker Solar Probe uses Venus’ gravity during seven flybys over nearly seven years to gradually bring its orbit closer to the Sun in order to unlock the mysteries of the Sun's atmosphere. The spacecraft will fly through the Sun’s atmosphere as close as 3.8 million miles(6.12 million kilometers) to our star’s surface, well within the orbit of Mercury and more than seven times closer than any spacecraft has come before. Earth’s average distance from the Sun is 93 million miles(149 million kilometers).

Flying into the outermost part of the Sun's atmosphere, known as the corona, for the first time, Parker Solar Probe employs a combination of undisturbed measurements and imaging to revolutionize our understanding of the corona and expand our knowledge of the origin and evolution of the solar wind. It also makes critical contributions to our ability to forecast changes in Earth's space environment that affect life and technology on Earth.

• Nation: United States of America (USA)
• Spacecraft: Parker Solar Probe (Solar Probe Plus)
• Objective(s): Solar Orbit
• Spacecraft Mass: 685 kilograms at launch
• Mission Design and Management: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
• Launch Vehicle: Delta IV-Heavy with Upper Stage
• Launching Date and Time: Aug. 12, 2018/ 7:31 UTC
• Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
• Scientific Instruments
• Fields Experiment (FIELDS)
• Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (IS☉IS ​)
• Wide Field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR)
• Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP)

 

Parker Solar Probe began its thirteenth solar encounter on Sept. 1, 2022.
 Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL

Extreme Exploration

Parker Solar Probe performs its scientific investigations in a hazardous region of extreme heat and solar radiation of our star. The spacecraft will fly close enough to the Sun to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and it will fly through the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles.

To perform these unprecedented investigations, the spacecraft and instruments are protected from the Sun’s heat by a 4.5-inch-thick (11.43 cm) carbon-composite shield. At the closest approach to the Sun, the front of Parker Solar Probe's solar shield faces temperatures approaching 2,500 F (1,377 C). The spacecraft's payload will be near room temperature.

At the closest approach, Parker Solar Probe hurtles around the Sun at approximately 430,000 mph (700,000 kph). That's fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., in one second.

On the final three orbits, Parker Solar Probe flies to within 3.8 million miles of the Sun's surface more than seven times closer than the current record-holder for a close solar pass, the Helios 2 spacecraft, which came within 27 million miles in 1976, and about a tenth as close as Mercury, which is, on average, about 36 million miles from the Sun.

Parker Solar Probe Heat Shield

The Science of the Sun

The primary science goals for the mission are to discover how energy and heat move through the solar corona and to explore what accelerates the solar wind as well as solar energetic particles. Scientists have sought these answers for more than 60 years, but the investigation requires sending a probe right through the 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit heat of the corona. Today, this is finally possible with cutting-edge thermal engineering advances that protect the mission on its dangerous journey. Parker Solar Probe carries four instrument suites designed to study magnetic fields, plasma, and energetic particles, and image the solar wind.

Teaming for Success

Sun is the source of every creature on Earth. Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA’s Living With a Star program to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. The Living With a Star flight program is managed by the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, manages the mission for NASA. APL designed, built, and operates the spacecraft.

Why do we study the Sun and the solar wind?

• The Sun is the closest star and the only star we can study. By studying this star we live with, we learn more about stars in the universe.
• The Sun is a source of light and heat for life on Earth. The more we know about it, the more we can understand how life on Earth developed.
• The Sun also affects Earth in less familiar ways.  It is the source of the solar wind; a flow of ionized gases from the Sun that streams past Earth at speeds of more than 500 km per second (a million miles per hour).
• Disturbances in the solar wind shake Earth's magnetic field and pump energy into the radiation belts, part of a set of changes in near-Earth space known as space weather.
• Space weather can change the orbits of satellites, shorten their lifetimes, or interfere with onboard electronics. The more we learn about what causes space weather – and how to predict it – the more we can protect the satellites we depend on.
• The solar wind also fills up much of the solar system, dominating the space environment far past Earth. As we send spacecraft and astronauts further and further from home, we must understand this space environment just as early seafarers needed to understand the ocean.

 NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has cleared the final procedures in the clean room before its move to the launch pad, where it will be integrated onto its launch vehicle, a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy
Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman

NASA’s Webb Takes Star-Filled Portrait of Pillars of Creation

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured an abundant, highly detailed landscape of the iconic Pillars of Creation, where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. The three-dimensional pillars look like great rock origination but are far more permeable. These columns are made up of cool interplanetary space gas and dust that appear at times semi-transparent in near-infrared light. This is a region where young stars are forming or have hardly burst from their dusty cocoons as they continue to form.

The Pillars of Creation are set off in a kaleidoscope of color in NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared-light view.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI). 

Webb’s new view of the Pillars of Creation, which were first made famous when imaged by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope in 1995, will help researchers renovate their models of star formation by identifying far more accurate counts of newly formed stars, along with the volume of gas and dust in the region. They will begin to build a clearer understanding of how stars form and crack out of these dusty clouds over millions of years.

Newly formed stars are the scene-stealers in this image from James Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). These are the bright red orbs that typically have diffraction spikes and lie outside one of the dusty pillars. When knots with an adequate mass form within the pillars of gas and dust, they begin to fall in under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars.

What about those wavy lines that look like lava at the edges of some pillars? 

These are ejections from stars still forming within the gas and dust. Young stars periodically shoot out supersonic jets that collide with clouds of material, like these thick pillars. This sometimes also results in bow shocks, which can form wavy patterns. The crimson glow comes from the energetic hydrogen molecules that result from jets and shocks. This is evident in the second and third pillars from the top the NIRCam image is practically pulsing with their activity. According to estimation, these young stars are only a few hundred thousand years old.

Although it may appear that near-infrared light has allowed James Webb to “stick through” the clouds to disclose great cosmic distances beyond the pillars, there are almost no galaxies in this view. Instead, a mix of semi-transparent gas and dust known as the interstellar medium in the densest part of our Milky Way galaxy’s disk blocks our view of much of the deeper universe.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope made the Pillars of Creation famous with its first image in 1995 but revisited the scene in 2014 to reveal a sharper, wider view in visible light, shown above at left. A new, near-infrared-light view from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, at right, helps us peer through more of the dust in this star-forming region. The thick, dusty brown pillars are no longer as opaque, and many more red stars that are still forming come into view.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI).

This scene was first imaged by Hubble in 1995 and recaptured in 2014, but many other observatories have also stared intensely at this region. Each advanced instrument offers researchers new details about this region, which is practically overflowing with stars.

This tightly cropped image is set within the vast Eagle Nebula, which lies 6,500 light-years away.

Jupiter's Secrets: NASA's Juno Mission

In Greek and Roman mythology, Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief. It was Jupiter's wife, the goddess Juno, who was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature. 

NASA’s Juno spacecraft takes off on a 5-year journey to the gas giant and the largest planet in our solar system called Jupiter on August 5, 2011. The mission is to probe beneath the planet's dense clouds and answer questions about the origin and evolution of Jupiter, our solar system, and giant planets in general across the cosmos. Juno arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016, after 5 years, 1.7-billion-mile journey, and settled into a 53-day polar orbit stretching from just above Jupiter’s cloud tops to the outer reaches of the Jovian magnetosphere (the region surrounding the earth or another astronomical body in which its magnetic field is the predominant effective magnetic field).

Juno’s discoveries have revolutionized our understanding of Jupiter and the solar system establishment. During the prime mission’s 35 orbits of Jupiter, Juno collected more than 375 gigabytes of science data and provided brilliant views of Jupiter and its satellites, all processed by citizen scientists with NASA’s first-ever camera dedicated to public outreach. Juno’s many discoveries have changed our view of Jupiter’s atmosphere and interior, revealing an atmospheric weather layer that extends far beyond its clouds and a deep interior with a dilute, or "fuzzy," heavy element core. Near the end of the prime mission, as the JUNO mission spacecraft’s orbit evolved, flybys of the moon Ganymede initiated Juno’s transition into a full Jovian system explorer.

Artist's concept of the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Now in its extended mission, the agency’s most distant planetary orbiter continues its investigation of the solar system’s largest planet through September 2025, or until the spacecraft’s end of life. The extended mission’s science campaigns expand on discoveries Juno has already made about Jupiter’s interior structure, internal magnetic field, the atmosphere including polar cyclones, deep atmosphere, auroras, and magnetosphere. Jupiter’s mysterious Great Blue Spot an isolated patch of the intense magnetic field near the planet’s equator is the target of a high spatial resolution magnetic survey during six flybys early in the extended mission.

At the time of closest approach, Juno will be about 2,580 miles (4,150 kilometers) above the gas giant’s roiling cloud tops and traveling at a speed of about 129,000 mph or 57.8 kilometers per second relative to the planet. Seven of Juno’s eight science instruments will be on and collecting data during the flyby.

Juno is now a discoverer of the full Jovian system. As the spacecraft's orbit continues to evolve, additional flybys of Europa and moons Io are planned. Juno will also fly through the Europa torus and the Io torus. These are doughnut-shaped clouds of charged particles that surround each moon's orbit. The spacecraft will pass through the tori on multiple occasions, characterizing the radiation environment near these satellites to better prepare NASA’s Europa Clipper mission and the European Space Agency’s JUICE mission for optimizing observation strategies and planning, science priorities, and mission design. The extended mission also adds a study of dust in Jupiter’s faint rings to Juno’s extensive list of science investigations.

Juno's principal goal is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter safeguards secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed our solar system during its formation. As our primary example of a giant planet, Jupiter can also provide critical knowledge for understanding the planetary systems being discovered around other stars.

With its suite of science instruments, Juno has investigated the existence of a solid planetary core, mapped Jupiter's intense magnetic field, measured the amount of water and ammonia in the deep atmosphere, and observed the planet's auroras.

Juno has let us take a giant step forward in our understanding of how giant planets form and the role these titans played in putting together the rest of the solar system.

Theories about solar system evaluation all begin with the collapse of a giant cloud of gas and dust, or nebula, most of which formed the infant Sun. Like the Sun, Jupiter is mostly hydrogen and helium, so it must have formed early, capturing most of the material left after our star came to be. How this happened, however, is unclear. Did a massive planetary core form first and gravitationally capture all that gas, or did an unstable region collapse inside the nebula, triggering the planet's formation? The differences between these scenarios are great.

Even more importantly, the composition and role of frozen planetesimals, or small protoplanets, in planetary formation hangs in the balance and with them, the origin of Earth and other earthbound planets. Frozen planetesimals likely were the carriers of materials like water and carbon compounds that are the fundamental building blocks of life.

Unlike Earth, Jupiter's giant mass allowed it to hold onto its original composition, providing us with a way of tracing our solar system's history. Juno is measuring the amount of water and ammonia in Jupiter's atmosphere. It helps to determine if the planet actually has a solid core, directly resolving the origin of this giant planet and thereby the solar system.  Juno revealed the planet's interior structure and measured the planet’s diluted heavy element core by mapping Jupiter's gravitational and magnetic fields. 

Juno has captured the first images we've ever seen of Jupiter's poles. Pictured here is the South Pole with its surprising bluish color and many Earth-sized storms.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles

Atmosphere

How deep Jupiter's colorful zones, belts, and other features penetrate is one of the most basic questions about the giant planet. Juno’s observations are helping to determine the global structure and motions of the planet's atmosphere below the cloud tops, mapping variations in the atmosphere's composition, temperature, clouds, and patterns of movement down to unprecedented depths.

Magnetosphere

Deep in Jupiter's atmosphere, under great pressure, hydrogen gas is compressed into a fluid known as metallic hydrogen. At these great depths, hydrogen reacts like an electrically conducting metal, and this is believed to be the source of the planet's intense magnetic field. This powerful magnetic environment creates the brightest auroras in our solar system, as charged particles precipitate down into the planet's atmosphere. Juno directly samples the charged particles and magnetic fields near Jupiter's poles, while simultaneously observing the auroras in ultraviolet light produced by the extraordinary amounts of energy crashing into the polar regions. These investigations are greatly improving our understanding of this remarkable phenomenon, and also of similar magnetic objects, like young stars with their own planetary systems.

Mission Timeline

• Launch - August 5, 2011
• Deep Space Maneuvers - August/September 2012
• Earth flyby gravity assist - October 2013
• Jupiter arrival - July 2016
• Extended Mission - August 2021
• End of Mission - September 2025

Juno is the second mission competitively selected under NASA's New Frontiers Program. The program provides opportunities to carry out several medium-class missions identified as top priority objectives in the planetary science decadal survey conducted by the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council in Washington.

JPL manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The New Frontiers Program is managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built and operates the spacecraft.

NASA’s Webb Captures Dying Star’s Final ‘Performance’ in Fine Detail

The Southern Ring Nebula cataloged as NGC 3132 and known as Eight-Burst Nebula, or Caldwell 74 is a bright and extensively studied planetary nebula in the constellation Vela. It is located 2500 light years away from Earth. Two cameras aboard Webb captured the latest image of this planetary nebula. The dimmer star at the center of this scene has been sending out rings of gas and dust for thousands of years in every direction, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed this star is cloaked in dust for the first time.

James Webb will tolerate astronomers to dig into many more special artifacts about planetary nebulae like this one – clouds of gas and dust thrown out by dying stars. Understanding which molecules are present, and where they lie throughout the shells of gas and dust will help researchers to clarify their knowledge of these objects.

This observation shows the Southern Ring Nebula almost face-on, but if we could rotate it to view it edge-on, its three-dimensional shape would more plainly look like two bowls placed together at the bottom, opening away from one another with a large hole at the center.

Two stars, which are locked in a compact orbit, shape the local environment. James Webb's infrared images feature new details in this most complex system. The stars and their layers of light are prominent in the image from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on the left, while the image from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the right shows for the first time that the second star is surrounded by dust. The brighter star is in an earlier stage of its stellar evolution and will probably eject its own planetary nebula in the future.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world's premier space science observatory. James Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).

NASA Headquarters oversees the mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages Webb for the agency and oversees work on the mission performed by the Space Telescope Science Institute, Northrop Grumman, and other mission partners. In addition to Goddard, several NASA centers contributed to the project, including the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California; Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama; Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley; and others.

NIRCam was built by a team at the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center.

MIRI was contributed by ESA and NASA, with the instrument designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona.

At the moment, the brighter star influences the nebula’s appearance. As the pair continues to orbit one another, they “stir the pot” of gas and dust, causing asymmetrical patterns.

Each shell represents an episode where the fainter star lost some of its mass. The widest shells of gas toward the outer areas of the image were sent out earlier. Those nearest to the star are the most recently discharged gas. Detecting these ejections allows researchers to look into the history of the system.

Observations that are taken with NIRCam's images also reveal extremely fine rays of light around the planetary nebula. Starlight from the central stars streams out where there are holes in the gas and dust such as sunlight through gaps in a cloud.

Since planetary nebulae have lived for tens of thousands of years, observing the nebula is like watching a movie in exceptionally slow motion. Each shell the star puffed off gives researchers the ability to measure the gas and dust that are present within it accurately.

As the star discharges shells of material, dust and molecules form within them changing the landscape even as the star continues to throw out material. This dust will eventually enhance the areas around it, expanding into what’s known as the interstellar medium. And since it’s very long-lived, the dust may end up traveling through space for billions of years and become incorporated into a new star or planet.

In thousands of years, these delicate layers of gas and dust will dissipate into surrounding space.

Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam)

The Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) is James Webb's primary imager that will cover the infrared wavelength range of 0.6 to 5 microns. NIRCam is equipped with coronagraphs, instruments that allow astronomers to take pictures of very faint objects around a central bright object, like stellar systems.  Read More...

James Webb captures Aurora and Hazes on Jupiter

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and the planet from the sun. It is primarily composed of gas such as hydrogen and helium. So, Jupiter can be introduced as a gas giant which is 11 times wider than Earth.  Jupiter has a lot going on with giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions. Before James Webb, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured Jupiter's images. After two years, in 2022 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured new images of the planet. James Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more important clues about Jupiter’s inner life.

Jupiter's images were captured from the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet. Infrared light is invisible to the human eye. So, the infrared light has been mapped onto the visible spectrum. Generally, the longest wavelengths of the infrared range appear red and the shortest wavelengths are shown as more blue. 

 Image of Jupiter from three filters – F360M (red), F212N (yellow-green), and F150W2 (cyan) – and alignment due to the planet’s rotation.
 Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team

In the standalone view of Jupiter, created from a composite of several images from Webb. Jupiter's auroras extend to high altitudes above both the northern and southern poles. The auroras shine in a filter mapped to redder colors, which also highlights light reflected from lower clouds and upper hazes. Another different filter, mapped to yellows and greens, shows hazes swirling around the northern and southern poles. The last and third filter, mapped to blues, showcases light that is reflected from a more profound main cloud.  

The Great Red Spot, which is a famous storm that spins counterclockwise at speeds that exceed 400 miles per hour and is big enough to swallow Earth, appears white in these views, as do other clouds because they are reflecting a lot of sunlight. NASA's Hubble space telescope captured the red spot in red color. 

“The brightness here indicates high altitude – so the Great Red Spot has high-altitude hazes, as does the equatorial region,” said Heidi Hammel, James Webb interdisciplinary scientist for solar system observations and vice president for science at AURA. “The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms.” By contrast, dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover.  

In a wide-field view, James Webb sees Jupiter with its faint rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet, and two tiny moons called Amalthea and Adrastea. The fuzzy spots in the lower background are likely galaxies “photobombing” this Jovian view. 

 James Webb NIRCam composite image of Jupiter system from two filters (F212N (orange) and F335M (cyan)) 
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team

 

 James Webb NIRCam composite image of Jupiter system from two filters(F212N (orange) and F335M (cyan)) with labels
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team

“This one image sums up the science of our Jupiter system program, which studies the dynamics and chemistry of Jupiter itself, its rings, and its satellite system,” Fouchet said. Researchers have already begun analyzing James Webb's data to get new scientific results about our solar system’s largest planet. 

James Webb doesn’t send the neatly packaged data to Earth. Instead, it contains information about the brightness of the light on James Webb’s detectors. When this information arrives at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), JamesWebb’s mission and science operations center collects them as raw data. Next, the STScI processes the data into calibrated files for scientific analysis and delivers it to the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes for dissemination. Then scientists translate that information into images like these during the course of their research. While a team at STScI formally processes images for official release, non-professional astronomers known as citizen scientists often dive into the public data archive to retrieve and process images.   

Image of Jupiter, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on Aug. 25, 2020
Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL team

James Webb Sheds Light on Galaxy Evolution

Stephan’s Quintet, which is a group of five galaxies, is best known for being prominently featured in the holiday classic film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It was discovered by the French astronomer Édouard Stephan in 1877 and is located in the constellation Pegasus.  NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals Stephan’s Quintet in a new light. This extensive mosaic is James Webb’s one of the largest images, covering about one-fifth of the Moon’s diameter. It contains over 150 million pixels and is constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files. The information from James Webb provides new insights into how galactic reactions may have driven galaxy evolution in the early universe.

The five galaxies of Stephan’s Quintet
Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

James Webb's powerful, infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution, it shows never-before-seen details in this group of galaxies. Million sparkling clusters of young stars and starburst regions of fresh star birth grace the image. Boundless tails of gas, dust, and stars are being pulled from several of the galaxies due to gravitational interactions. Most dramatically, James Webb captures huge shock waves as one of the galaxies, NGC 7318B, smashes through the cluster.

The five galaxies of Stephan’s Quintet are also known as the Hickson Compact Group 92 (HCG 92). Although called a “quintet,” only four of the galaxies are actually close together and caught up in a cosmic dance. The fifth and leftmost galaxy, called NGC 7320, is well in the foreground compared with the other four. NGC 7320 resides 40 million light-years away, while the other four galaxies (NGC 7317, NGC 7318A, NGC 7318B, and NGC 7319) are about 290 million light-years away from Earth. In cosmic terms, this is still fairly close compared with more faraway galaxies billions of light-years away. Studying such relatively nearby galaxies like these helps scientists better understand structures seen in a much more distant universe.

NGC 7317, NGC 7318A and  NGC 7318B, NGC 7319, and NGC 7320(Left to right respectively)

This proximity provides astronomers a ringside seat for witnessing the merging and interactions between galaxies that are so critical to all of galaxy evolution. Infrequently scientists see in so much detail how interacting galaxies trigger star formation in each other, and how the gas in these galaxies is being interrupted. Stephan’s Quintet is a fantastic place for studying these processes fundamental to all galaxies in the universe.

Compressed groups like this group of galaxies may have been more common in the early universe when their superheated, material which is moving under gravity may have fueled very energetic black holes called quasars. Even today, the topmost galaxy in the group – NGC 7319 – harbors an active galactic nucleus, a supermassive black hole that has 24 million times the mass of the Sun. It is actively pulling in material and puts out light energy equivalent to 40 billion Suns. 

NGC 7319
Photo credit: NASA

James Webb studied the active galactic nucleus in detail with the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). These instruments’ integral field units (IFUs) – which are a combination of a camera and spectrograph – provided the James Webb team with a “data cube,” or collection of images of the galactic core’s spectral features.

JWST optical devices
Photo Credit: ESA(European Space Agency)

JWST Mid Infrared Instrument (MIRI)

Much like medical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the IFUs allow scientists to “slice and dice” the information into many images for detailed study. James Webb pierced through the cover of dust surrounding the nucleus to reveal hot gas near the active black hole and measure the velocity of bright outflows. The telescope saw these outflows driven by the black hole in a level of detail never seen before.

James Webb was able to resolve individual stars and even the galaxy’s bright core in NGC 7320 which is the leftmost and closest galaxy in the visual grouping, 

Webb also revealed a boundless sea of thousands of distant background galaxies reminiscent of Hubble’s Deep Fields.

Combined with the most detailed infrared image ever of Stephan’s Quintet from MIRI and the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the data from Webb will provide premium valuable, new information. For example, it will help scientists understand the feeding and growth rate of supermassive black holes. Webb also sees star-forming regions much more directly, and it is able to examine emissions from the dust – a level of detail impossible to obtain until now.