NASA has plans to explore two nearby super-Earths with its new James Webb Space Telescope.
With the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) nearing full-operation mode, the US space agency is preparing to investigate two rocky exoplanets named 55 Cancri e and LHS 3844 b.
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Super-Earths are a class of outer-solar system planets with a mass higher than Earth’s but substantially lower than Uranus’ and Neptune’s, which are 14.5 and 17 times Earth’s, respectively.
These types of planets are of interest to researchers because they don’t exist in our solar system and can offer new perspectives on Earth-like planets.
Specifically, they can “help us learn what the early Earth might have been like when it was hot like these planets are today,” Laura Kreidberg of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy said.
In its first year, JWST is going to heavily focus on two such exoplanets: 55 Cancri e, a hellishly hot planet covered in lava oceans, and LHS 3844 b, a small and cool world.
These observations will be conducted as part of Webb’s Cycle 1 General Observers program.
“General Observers programs were competitively selected using a dual-anonymous review system, the same system used to allocate time on Hubble,” Nasa said.
55 Cancri e
Also known as Janssen, 55 Cancri e is located just 50 light-years away from Earth.
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It orbits its Sun-like star called Copernicus at a distance of just 1.5 million miles.
That proximity has led to the planet’s “molten surface [which] is completely uninhabitable,” Nasa said in a statement.
“With surface temperatures far above the melting point of typical rock-forming minerals, the dayside of the planet is thought to be covered in oceans of lava.”
By looking at 55 Cancri e, researchers are hoping to learn more about its atmosphere and whether the planet is “tidally locked”, meaning one side is facing the star at all times.
“If it has an atmosphere, [Webb] has the sensitivity and wavelength range to detect it and determine what it is made of,” Renyu Hu of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California said.
LHS 3844 b
The second planet Webb will be studying is LHS 3844 b, which is located about 49 light-years away.
Like 55 Cancri e, LHS 3844 b also orbits extremely close to its star, completing one revolution in just 11 hours.
However, because its star is much smaller and cooler than Copernicus, the planet is much not as hot as 55 Cancri e.
Initial observations from Nasa’s Spitzer Telescope also show that the planet is very unlikely to have a substantial, or thick atmosphere.
And while Webb won’t be able to photograph the exoplanet’s surface directly, researchers will be able to use spectroscopy to identify its composition.
“It turns out that different types of rock have different spectra,” explained Laura Kreidberg at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.
“You can see with your eyes that granite is lighter in color than basalt. There are similar differences in the infrared light that rocks give off.”
Over the last three decades, researchers have uncovered several super-Earth exoplanets, however, most of them remain shrouded in mystery.
For that reason, researchers are hoping to further explore these planets and their respective stars – and with the help of JWST, it’s more possible than ever before.
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