James Webb Telescope will study our solar system's 'ocean worlds'

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 74%. (I'm a bot)

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will use its infrared capabilities to study the "Ocean worlds" of Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus, adding to observations previously made by NASA's Galileo and Cassini orbiters.

One of the telescope's science goals is to study planets that could help shed light on the origins of life, but this does not just mean exoplanets; Webb will also help unravel the mysteries still held by objects in our own solar system.

His team is part of a larger effort to study our solar system with the telescope, spearheaded by astronomer Heidi Hammel, the executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.

For Enceladus, Villanueva explained that because that moon is nearly 10 times smaller than Europa as seen from the Webb telescope, high-resolution imagery of its surface will not be possible.

While the Webb telescope may be unable to concretely answer whether the subsurface oceans of the moons contain life, Villanueva said it will be able to pinpoint and better characterize active regions of the moons that could merit further study.

Explore further: Image: James Webb Space Telescope mirror seen in full bloom.

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