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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday October 31 2020, @01:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the reading-tombstones dept.

NASA's Webb to examine objects in the graveyard of the solar system:

Beyond the orbit of Neptune, a diverse collection of thousands of dwarf planets and other relatively small objects dwells in a region called the Kuiper Belt. These often-pristine leftovers from our solar system's days of planet formation are called Kuiper Belt objects, or trans-Neptunian objects. NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will examine an assortment of these icy bodies in a series of programs called Guaranteed Time Observations shortly after its launch in 2021. The goal is to learn more about how our solar system formed.

"These are objects that are in the graveyard of solar system formation," explained Cornell University's Jonathan Lunine, a Webb Interdisciplinary Scientist who will use Webb to study some of these targets. "They're in a place where they could last for billions of years, and there aren't many places like that in our solar system. We'd love to know what they're like."

By studying these bodies, Lunine and his colleagues hope to learn about which ices were present in the early solar system. These are the coldest worlds to display geologic and atmospheric activity, so scientists are also interested in comparing them with the planets.

[...] The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. 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 the Canadian Space Agency.


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2020, @08:02AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 31 2020, @08:02AM (#1071209)

    These stories are about keeping the project alive long enough to get it launched. Webb is already late and unlikely to meet the 2021 launch date and there are legitimate fears that funding will be cut in favour of the SLS, because Congress considers NASA to be a vehicle for pork and actual science as a needless expense.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday October 31 2020, @08:07AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 31 2020, @08:07AM (#1071210) Journal

    The fact that I know why doesn't quite mitigate the feeling of weariness.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford