NASA Reveals First Images of Mars Captured by James Webb Space Telescope

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first images and spectra of Mars.

Using its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the telescope snapped photos of the planet’s eastern hemisphere at different infrared light colors on Sept. 5.

The first picture, which is actually a composite of two images, shows a surface reference map from NASA and the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) with the two NIRCam instrument field of views overlaid.

(Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Mars JWST & GTO team)

The short wavelength image (above, top right) features reflected sunlight, which reveals surface details like the rings of the Huygens Crater, dark volcanic rock of Syrtis Major, and brightening of the Hellas Basin.

The longer-wavelength photo (above, bottom right) shows light emitted by Mars as it loses heat; the brightness—at its peak where the Sun is nearly overhead—decreases toward the polar regions. Some light, however, is absorbed by carbon dioxide molecules, making the Hellas Basin—the largest well-preserved impact structure on Mars—appear darker than its surroundings.

“This is actually not a thermal effect at Hellas,” according to(Opens in a new window) Geronimo Villanueva, principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and designer of these Webb observations. “It will be very interesting to tease apart these competing effects in these data.”

From its vantage point nearly 1 million miles away, JWST can watch Mars’ observable disk (the sunlit side facing the telescope), collecting pictures scientists can use to study dust storms, weather patterns, seasonal changes, and daily processes.

There’s just one problem: Due to its proximity to Earth, the Red Planet is one of the brightest objects in the night sky. That’s great for stargazers, but not ideal for an observatory built to detect extremely faint light of distant galaxies. Employing a series of special techniques, astronomers have adjusted for Mars’ extreme brightness, allowing Webb to measure small bursts of light without being blinded.

Moving forward, the Mars team will use this imaging and spectroscopic data to explore regional differences across the planet, and search for trace gases (including methane and hydrogen chloride) in its atmosphere.