NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has successfully identified a new population of 138 small asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, a feat made possible by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
The newly detected asteroids, ranging in size from that of a bus to a stadium, were previously undetectable by ground-based telescopes. This discovery sheds light on the evolutionary history of asteroids and their formation through collisions among larger bodies in the belt.
According to Tom Greene, an astrophysicist at NASA's Ames Research Center, understanding the size distribution of main belt asteroids can provide insights into how they have changed over time and how some have escaped their original orbits to potentially become near-Earth objects.
This research supports the Asteroid Threat Assessment Project (ATAP) at Ames, which collaborates with NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office to evaluate risks associated with potential Earth impacts. Jessie Dotson, also from Ames, emphasized the importance of these findings for planetary defense strategies.
The detection method utilized by the MIT team involved analyzing over 10,000 images of the star TRAPPIST-1, originally captured to seek exoplanet atmospheres. Asteroids are more visible in infrared light, which is the primary wavelength that Webb detects.
Looking forward, NASA's upcoming Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission aims to further enhance our understanding of near-Earth asteroids and comets that could pose risks to our planet.