The James Webb Space Telescope is an international collaboration of NASA along with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captures its first images and infrared spectrum of Mars.
“Webb’s unique observation post nearly a million miles away at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2) provides a view of Mars’ observable disk (the portion of the sunlit side that is facing the telescope),” NASA said in a blog.
“As a result, Webb can capture images and spectra with the spectral resolution needed to study short-term phenomena like dust storms, weather patterns, seasonal changes, and, in a single observation, processes that occur at different times (daytime, sunset, and nighttime) of a Martian day,” it added.
The telescope, which is an international collaboration of NASA along with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, captured the first images of Mars on September 5 by the Near-Infrared Camera and showed a region of the planet’s eastern hemisphere at two different wavelengths, or colors of infrared light.
The U.S. space agency said that the James Webb Space Telescope “provides a unique perspective with its infrared sensitivity on our neighboring planet, complementing data being collected by orbiters, rovers, and other telescopes.”
Going ahead, this imaging and spectroscopic data will be used by the Mars team to explore regional differences across the planet. Furthermore, it will also aid in searching traces of different gases in the atmosphere.
