For ages, Mars has been the point of interest in the night sky. As a War of God for ancient Romans to came under the wheels of several landers and rovers, most importantly, the Curiosity in Gale crater and the Perseverance in Jezero crater. Both rovers have been exploring the Red planet for years with various scientific instruments. They have found organic materials underneath the soil and rocks, but it is to be confirmed if they belong to any ancient microbial life. Recently, the Perseverance rover found some organic material that could signify ancient life in Wildcat Ridge and Skinner Ridge inside the ancient river delta of the Jezero crater. Unfortunately, the science lab onboard Perseverance is not state-of-the-art to verify life’s existence from samples from the Jezero crater. The samples from the Perseverance rover needed to be brought back through the Mars Sample Return mission, which is currently under consideration and planning. Perseverance is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration mission, and the moon part is the Artemis program, which will begin very soon.
The James Webb Telescope’s image and spectra of Mars after Jupiter’s will help explore the path of the Moon to Mars. Did you see something new in Webb’s Mars images? No, nothing new was found on the Red Planet. We already knew everything that had been revealed. Carbon dioxide, frozen water, clouds, craters, atmospheric composition, and temperature distribution are all parameters that the landers, rovers, and orbiters on the Red Planet have already told us, so what is the use of James Webb here?
A brief overview of the images
Take a look at these images thoroughly, and then let me tell you about the superiority of James Webb’s Red Planet images. The left part of the first image (Fig 1) is a reference map for the Martian surface from NASA and the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) that was part of the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter (1997–2006). Now, look at Webb’s image (on the right); you can see three areas: Hellas Basin, Syrtis Major, and Huygens Crater. Compare these three areas with a reference map image. In the 2.1 micrometre filter (top right), James Webb’s image is the same as a normal optical camera image. It includes the black mark of Syrtis Major’s lava spread, and the rim of Huygens Crater is similar to MOLA’s. In the 4.3 micrometre filter (right bottom), there is a lot of heat coming off the surface of Mars, but the different thing is that the 1930 km wide Hellas Basin looks a little darker Why? Because the pressure of the Martian atmosphere above this area is high (due to lower altitude), this is called pressure broadening, said Goddard space flight centre researchers. As a result, heat escapes from the basin a little less than in other areas. The second image (Fig 2) shows spectroscopy of compounds in the Martian atmosphere using the NIRSpec camera.
Spectroscopy tells us a lot about the atmospheric composition of the Red planet. Elements present in the atmosphere absorb and emit light at a specific wavelength. This creates a spectrum of absorption lines. Every element has a specific absorption pattern that can be identified from the spectroscopic analysis of received light. Webb’s image has confirmed the presence of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and water in the Martian atmosphere. Well, this has proved Webb’s instruments as reliable as they should be. The main source of this article is a paper submitted by NASA that has not been peer-reviewed yet.
What priority will James Webb have?
For example, all the missions to Mars can observe a very small area; for example, the Curiosity and Perseverance rovers have travelled only 28 and 12 km, respectively. They have data from only a small part of the Martian surface. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) can also cover a very small area at a time. The ESA’s ExoMars TGO (Trace Gas Orbiter) cannot confirm the ground-based identification of methane in the Red planet’s atmosphere, but James Webb would make the difference. Webb would be able to see a greater part of Mars in a short time, and to analyse the land, ice clouds, storms, rocks, winds, and plains with no limitations of day or night. A single observation can determine atmospheric variations, seasonal changes, weather patterns, and most heat-receiving areas. These images were just an experiment that confirmed James Webb’s data with the rest of the missions. The real benefit in a single sentence is that “Webb will do more work in days than all the others can do in years.”
Mars’ observation is a part of the Cycle 1 Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) programme in which James Webb will examine the Solar System. Heidi Hammel of AURA leads this program. So let’s see what is coming for us from this world.
Saqib Ali
Saqib Ali is a content writer who has been writing about space science in various forums for the past few years. He has a master’s degree in computer science.