Researchers used Webb's Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, to take a series of images of Jupiter 10 hours apart, applying four different filters to detect changes in the planet's atmosphere.
The astronomers spied a high-speed jet stream in Jupiter's lower stratosphere, an atmospheric layer about 40km above the clouds.
The jet stream, which sits over the planet's equator, spans more than 4800km wide and moves at 515km/hr, or twice the rate seen with sustained winds of a Category 5 hurricane on Earth.
Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system and is composed of gases.
NASA has today showed off its first asteroid samples delivered last month by a spacecraft - a jumble of black dust and rubble that's the most ever returned to Earth.
Pictured is the outside of the Osiris-Rex sample collector with material from asteroid Bennu at middle right.
Scientists have found evidence of both carbon and water in initial analysis of this material.
The Osiris-Rex spacecraft touched down on the surface of asteroid Bennu in October 2020. It took just under three years to bring the samples 97 million kilometres back to Earth.
Scientists anticipated getting a cupful of materials but are still unsure how much was grabbed from the carbon-rich asteroid. That's because the main sample chamber has yet to be opened, officials said during an event at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
"It's been going slow and meticulous, but the science is already starting," said the mission's lead scientist, Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona.
The Osiris-Rex spacecraft dropped the samples off sealed in a capsule during a flyby of Earth last month.
The expected cupful was far more than the teaspoon or so that Japan brought back from a pair of missions.
Pictured is an artist's rendering of the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft contacting the asteroid Bennu with the Touch-And-Go Sample Arm Mechanism.
Recovery team members carry a capsule containing NASA's first asteroid samples to a temporary clean room at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah on September 24.
Lauretta said there's still "a whole treasure chest of extraterrestrial material" to be studied. The samples are priceless - the preserved building blocks from the dawn of the solar system.
The asteroid pieces are now behind locked doors in a new lab at the space center, accessible only to scientists in protective gear.
Besides carbon, the asteroid rubble holds water in the form of water-bearing clay minerals, Lauretta and others pointed out.
"That is how we think water got to the Earth," he said.
"Minerals like we're seeing from Bennu landed on Earth four billion years ago to 4.5 billion years ago, making our world habitable."
That was one of the primary reasons for the $1 billion, seven-year mission: to help learn how the solar system - and Earth in particular - formed.
"You can't get more exciting than that," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Once the samples are archived, the team will dole out particles to researchers around the world, while saving a fair amount for future analysis when better technology should be available.
New images from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed surprising pairs of planet-like objects in the Orion Nebula that have never been detected before.
The Orion Nebula, a glowing cloud of dust and gas, is one of the brightest nebulae in the night sky and identifiable as the sword in the Orion constellation.
Located 1300 light-years from Earth, the nebula has long presented astronomers with a wealth of celestial objects to study, including planet-forming disks around young stars and brown dwarfs, or objects with a mass between that of planets and stars.
Astronomers used Webb's near-infrared camera, called NIRCam, to capture mosaics of the Orion Nebula in short and long wavelengths of light, revealing unprecedented details and unexpected discoveries.
When astronomers Samuel G. Pearson and Mark J. McCaughrean studied the short-wavelength image of the Orion Nebula, they zoomed in on the Trapezium Cluster, a young star-forming region that's about 1 million years old, filled to the brim with thousands of new stars.
In addition to the stars, the scientists spotted brown dwarfs, which are too small to kick-start the nuclear fusion at their cores to become stars.
Brown dwarfs have a mass that is below seven per cent the mass of the sun.
On the hunt for other low-mass isolated objects, the astronomers found something they had never seen: pairs of planet-like objects with masses between 0.6 and 13 times the mass of Jupiter that appear to defy some fundamental astronomical theories.
The scientists dubbed them Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, or JuMBOs.
Scientists have taken their first glimpse of a sample collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu — and stumbled upon a good bit more than they expected.
When they opened the canister containing the sample on September 26, the researchers discovered an abundance of dark, fine-grained material on the inside of the container's lid and base surrounding the mechanism used to collect the extraterrestrial rocks and soil.
That unexpected debris could reveal key insights about the asteroid before the primary sample is analyzed.
The sample's historic landing in the Utah desert September 24 marked the culmination of NASA's 7-year OSIRIS-Rex mission, which traveled to Bennu some 320 million kilometres from Earth, touched down on the asteroid and then flew back by Earth for the sample drop.
Total trip distance: some 6.21 billion kilometres.
A building block of life may exist inside the global ocean on Europa, one of Jupiter's icy moons.
Two independent teams of astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the frozen surface of Europa, and each analysis of the space observatory's detections revealed an abundance of carbon dioxide within a specific region of the frigid terrain.
Both studies describing the findings were published September 21 in the journal Science.
"On Earth, life likes chemical diversity — the more diversity, the better. We're carbon-based life. Understanding the chemistry of Europa's ocean will help us determine whether it's hostile to life as we know it, or if it might be a good place for life," said Geronimo Villanueva, lead author of the first study and planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.
Europa is one of several ocean worlds in our solar system besides Earth where scientists believe life could exist. Beneath a thick ice shell, Europa harbors a subsurface global ocean that may contain twice as much water as our planet's oceans.
But environments suitable for life need more than water — they also require a supply of organic molecules and an energy source, according to NASA.
Scientists have long questioned whether Europa's ocean contained carbon and other chemicals necessary for life.
When Webb data revealed the presence of carbon on Europa's surface, the researchers conducted an analysis to see whether it was delivered by meteorites, or if it originated within the internal ocean.
Carbon dioxide appears to be concentrated in a region of "chaos terrain" on Europa called Tara Regio. The geologically young area contains ice that has been disrupted and resurfaced, suggesting that material has been exchanged between the ocean and the surface.
Carbon dioxide isn't stable on Europa's surface, which also led the two teams to the same conclusion that it was supplied by the ocean.
NASA's first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert overnight to cap a seven-year journey.
In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 100,000km out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the mothership set off after another asteroid.
"We have touchdown!" Mission Recovery Operations announced, immediately repeating the news since the landing occurred three minutes early.
Officials later said the orange striped parachute opened four times higher than anticipated – around 6.1km – basing it on the deceleration rate.
To everyone's relief, the capsule was intact and not breached, keeping its 4.5 billion-year-old samples free of contamination.
Scientists estimate the capsule holds at least a cup of rubble from the carbon-rich asteroid known as Bennu, but won't know for sure until the container is opened in a day or two.
Some spilled and floated away when the spacecraft scooped up too much material, which jammed the container's lid during collection three years ago.
Within two hours of touchdown, the capsule was inside a temporary clean room at the Defense Department's Utah Test and Training Range, hoisted there by helicopter.
Asteroid sample
The pebbles and dust delivered Sunday represent the biggest haul from beyond the moon. Preserved building blocks from the dawn of our solar system, the samples will help scientists better understand how Earth and life formed, providing "an extraordinary glimpse" of 4.5 billion years ago, said NASA administrator Bill Nelson.
NASA plans a public show-and-tell in October.
Earlier...
An illustration depicts the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it descended toward the rocky surface of asteroid Bennu.
When the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft swings by Earth on Sunday, it is expected to deliver a rare cosmic gift: a pristine sample collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.
If all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will release a capsule containing an estimated 8.8 ounces (about 250 grams) of asteroid rocks and soil from space toward a landing zone in the Utah desert.
NASA will provide a live stream of the sample delivery beginning at 10am ET Sunday (Sunday midnight AEST). The capsule is expected to enter Earth's atmosphere at 10.42am ET, traveling about 44,498km/hr. It will land in Utah about 13 minutes later.
After releasing the capsule, OSIRIS-REx will continue on its tour of the solar system to capture a detailed look at a different asteroid named Apophis.
Studying the sample can help scientists understand key details about the origins of our solar system because asteroids are the "leftovers" from those early days 4.5 billion years ago. But the sample can also provide insights into Bennu, which has a chance of colliding with Earth in the future.
Returning NASA's first asteroid sample collected in space to Earth has been years in the making.
The first US mission sent to a near-Earth asteroid, OSIRIS-REx made history several times over. It performed the closest orbit of a planetary body by a spacecraft. Bennu became the smallest object ever orbited by a spacecraft.
OSIRIS-REx surveyed the asteroid in its entirety to determine the best location to collect a sample. Bennu, a rubble-pile asteroid shaped like a spinning top, is about 500 metres wide and composed of rocks bound together by gravity.
The views of Bennu provided by the spacecraft afforded the mission team unprecedented insights about the asteroid, which included the discovery of water ice locked within Bennu's rocks and carbon in a form largely associated with biology. The team also witnessed particles from the asteroid releasing into space.
Asteroid sample
Since bidding Bennu farewell in May 2021, OSIRIS-REx has been on a return trip to Earth, circling the sun twice so it can fly by our planet at the right time to drop off the asteroid sample.
NASA and Lockheed Martin Space have spent much of this year rehearsing every step of the sample retrieval process.
If the spacecraft's trajectory is on track, the sample capsule is expected to release from OSIRIS-REx 102,000km from Earth on early Sunday.
Since departing Bennu, the spacecraft has made numerous maneuvers and fired its thrusters so it will fly by Earth at the right time to release the capsule. The capsule will land within an area of 58km by 14km on the Defense Department's Utah Test and Training Range (pictured) where recovery teams have been training for months.
Parachutes will deploy to slow the capsule to a gentle touchdown at 17.7km/hr , and recovery teams will be standing by to retrieve the capsule once it is safe to do so, said Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-REx program manager at Lockheed Martin Space, which partnered with NASA to build the spacecraft, provide flight operations and help recover the capsule.
A helicopter will carry the sample in a cargo net and deliver it to a temporary cleanroom established at the range in June. There, a team will prepare the sample container for transport on a C-17 aircraft to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday. Details about the sample will be revealed through a NASA broadcast from Johnson on October 11.
Scientists will analyse the rocks and soil for the next two years at a dedicated cleanroom inside Johnson Space Center.
"We're looking for clues as to why Earth is a habitable world — this rare jewel in outer space that has oceans and has a protective atmosphere," said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
"We think all of those materials were brought by these carbon-rich asteroids very early in our planetary system formation. We believe that we're bringing back that kind of material, literally maybe representatives of the seeds of life that these asteroids delivered at the beginning of our planet that led to this amazing biosphere, biological evolution and to us being here today."