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Martian Colors Provide Clues about Martian Water
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By European Space Agency
To create a crumbly crater rich in ice and chunky blocks soaked in layers of martian history – like this one recently observed by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express – follow this recipe:
Toss a space rock into Mars to form a classic circular base Layer with molten lava Carve channels with liquid water Chill to create ice, and freeze-thaw multiple times to slowly expand crater edges Sprinkle generously with volcanic dust, and leave to set Serve to hungry Mars fans! View the full article
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By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Chaitén Volcano in southern Chile erupted on May 2, 2008 for the first time inn 9,000 years. NASA satellites that monitor changes in vegetation near volcanoes could aid in earlier eruption warnings.Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientists know that changing tree leaves can indicate when a nearby volcano is becoming more active and might erupt. In a new collaboration between NASA and the Smithsonian Institution, scientists now believe they can detect these changes from space.
As volcanic magma ascends through the Earth’s crust, it releases carbon dioxide and other gases which rise to the surface. Trees that take up the carbon dioxide become greener and more lush. These changes are visible in images from NASA satellites such as Landsat 8, along with airborne instruments flown as part of the Airborne Validation Unified Experiment: Land to Ocean (AVUELO).
Ten percent of the world’s population lives in areas susceptible to volcanic hazards. People who live or work within a few miles of an eruption face dangers that include ejected rock, dust, and surges of hot, toxic gases. Further away, people and property are susceptible to mudslides, ashfalls, and tsunamis that can follow volcanic blasts. There’s no way to prevent volcanic eruptions, which makes the early signs of volcanic activity crucial for public safety. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, NASA’s Landsat mission partner, the United States is one of the world’s most volcanically active countries.
Carbon dioxide released by rising magma bubbles up and heats a pool of water in Costa Rica near the Rincón de LaVieja volcano. Increases in volcanic gases could be a sign that a volcano is becoming more active.Josh Fisher/Chapman University When magma rises underground before an eruption, it releases gases, including carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. The sulfur compounds are readily detectable from orbit. But the volcanic carbon dioxide emissions that precede sulfur dioxide emissions – and provide one of the earliest indications that a volcano is no longer dormant – are difficult to distinguish from space.
The remote detection of carbon dioxide greening of vegetation potentially gives scientists another tool — along with seismic waves and changes in ground height—to get a clear idea of what’s going on underneath the volcano. “Volcano early warning systems exist,” said volcanologist Florian Schwandner, chief of the Earth Science Division at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, who had teamed up with Fisher and Bogue a decade ago. “The aim here is to make them better and make them earlier.”
“Volcanoes emit a lot of carbon dioxide,” said volcanologist Robert Bogue of McGill University in Montreal, but there’s so much existing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that it’s often hard to measure the volcanic carbon dioxide specifically. While major eruptions can expel enough carbon dioxide to be measurable from space with sensors like NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2, detecting these much fainter advanced warning signals has remained elusive. “A volcano emitting the modest amounts of carbon dioxide that might presage an eruption isn’t going to show up in satellite imagery,” he added.
Gregory Goldsmith from Chapman University launches a slingshot into the forest canopy to install a carbon dioxide sensor in the canopy of a Costa Rican rainforest near the Rincón de LaVieja volcano.Josh Fisher/Chapman University Because of this, scientists must trek to volcanoes to measure carbon dioxide directly. However, many of the roughly 1,350 potentially active volcanoes worldwide are in remote locations or challenging mountainous terrain. That makes monitoring carbon dioxide at these sites labor-intensive, expensive, and sometimes dangerous.
Volcanologists like Bogue have joined forces with botanists and climate scientists to look at trees to monitor volcanic activity. “The whole idea is to find something that we could measure instead of carbon dioxide directly,” Bogue said, “to give us a proxy to detect changes in volcano emissions.”
“There are plenty of satellites we can use to do this kind of analysis,” said volcanologist Nicole Guinn of the University of Houston. She has compared images collected with Landsat 8, NASA’s Terra satellite, ESA’s (European Space Agency) Sentinel-2, and other Earth-observing satellites to monitor trees around the Mount Etna volcano on the coast of Sicily. Guinn’s study is the first to show a strong correlation between tree leaf color and magma-generated carbon dioxide.
Confirming accuracy on the ground that validates the satellite imagery is a challenge that climate scientist Josh Fisher of Chapman University is tackling with surveys of trees around volcanoes. During the March 2025 Airborne Validation Unified Experiment: Land to Ocean mission with NASA and the Smithsonian Institution scientists deployed a spectrometer on a research plane to analyze the colors of plant life in Panama and Costa Rica.
Alexandria Pivovaroff of Occidental College measures photosynthesis in leaves extracted from trees exposed to elevated levels of carbon dioxide near a volcano in Costa Rica.Josh Fisher/Chapman University Fisher directed a group of investigators who collected leaf samples from trees near the active Rincon de la Vieja volcano in Costa Rica while also measuring carbon dioxide levels. “Our research is a two-way interdisciplinary intersection between ecology and volcanology,” Fisher said. “We’re interested not only in tree responses to volcanic carbon dioxide as an early warning of eruption, but also in how much the trees are able to take up, as a window into the future of the Earth when all of Earth’s trees are exposed to high levels of carbon dioxide.”
Relying on trees as proxies for volcanic carbon dioxide has its limitations. Many volcanoes feature climates that don’t support enough trees for satellites to image. In some forested environments, trees that respond differently to changing carbon dioxide levels. And fires, changing weather conditions, and plant diseases can complicate the interpretation of satellite data on volcanic gases.
Chapman University visiting professor Gaku Yokoyama checks on the leaf-measuring instrumentation at a field site near the Rincón de LaVieja volcano.Josh Fisher/Chapman University Still, Schwandner has witnessed the potential benefits of volcanic carbon dioxide observations first-hand. He led a team that upgraded the monitoring network at Mayon volcano in the Philippines to include carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide sensors. In December 2017, government researchers in the Philippines used this system to detect signs of an impending eruption and advocated for mass evacuations of the area around the volcano. Over 56,000 people were safely evacuated before a massive eruption began on January 23, 2018. As a result of the early warnings, there were no casualties.
Using satellites to monitor trees around volcanoes would give scientists earlier insights into more volcanoes and offer earlier warnings of future eruptions. “There’s not one signal from volcanoes that’s a silver bullet,” Schwandner said. “And tracking the effects of volcanic carbon dioxide on trees will not be a silver bullet. But it will be something that could change the game.”
By James Riordon
NASA’s Earth Science News Team
Media contact: Elizabeth Vlock
NASA Headquarters
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James R. Riordon
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Last Updated May 15, 2025 LocationAmes Research Center Related Terms
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By NASA
Explore Webb Webb News Latest News Latest Images Webb’s Blog Awards X (offsite – login reqd) Instagram (offsite – login reqd) Facebook (offsite- login reqd) Youtube (offsite) Overview About Who is James Webb? Fact Sheet Impacts+Benefits FAQ Science Overview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycle Other Worlds Observatory Overview Launch Deployment Orbit Mirrors Sunshield Instrument: NIRCam Instrument: MIRI Instrument: NIRSpec Instrument: FGS/NIRISS Optical Telescope Element Backplane Spacecraft Bus Instrument Module Multimedia About Webb Images Images Videos What is Webb Observing? 3d Webb in 3d Solar System Podcasts Webb Image Sonifications Team International Team People Of Webb More For the Media For Scientists For Educators For Fun/Learning 5 Min Read Another First: NASA Webb Identifies Frozen Water in Young Star System
For the first time, researchers confirmed the presence of crystalline water ice in a dusty debris disk that orbits a Sun-like star, using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The full artist’s concept illustration and full caption is shown below. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI) Is frozen water scattered in systems around other stars? Astronomers have long expected it is, partially based on previous detections of its gaseous form, water vapor, and its presence in our own solar system.
Now there is definitive evidence: Researchers confirmed the presence of crystalline water ice in a dusty debris disk that orbits a Sun-like star 155 light-years away using detailed data known as spectra from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. (The term water ice specifies its makeup, since many other frozen molecules are also observed in space, such as carbon dioxide ice, or “dry ice.”) In 2008, data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope hinted at the possibility of frozen water in this system.
“Webb unambiguously detected not just water ice, but crystalline water ice, which is also found in locations like Saturn’s rings and icy bodies in our solar system’s Kuiper Belt,” said Chen Xie, the lead author of the new paper and an assistant research scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.
All the frozen water Webb detected is paired with fine dust particles throughout the disk — like itsy-bitsy “dirty snowballs.” The results published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Astronomers have been waiting for this definitive data for decades. “When I was a graduate student 25 years ago, my advisor told me there should be ice in debris disks, but prior to Webb, we didn’t have instruments sensitive enough to make these observations,” said Christine Chen, a co-author and associate astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “What’s most striking is that this data looks similar to the telescope’s other recent observations of Kuiper Belt objects in our own solar system.”
Water ice is a vital ingredient in disks around young stars — it heavily influences the formation of giant planets and may also be delivered by small bodies like comets and asteroids to fully formed rocky planets. Now that researchers have detected water ice with Webb, they have opened the door for all researchers to study how these processes play out in new ways in many other planetary systems.
Image: Debris Disk Around Star HD 181327 (Artist’s Concept)
For the first time, researchers confirmed the presence of crystalline water ice in a dusty debris disk that orbits a Sun-like star, using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. All the frozen water detected by Webb is paired with fine dust particles throughout the disk. The majority of the water ice observed is found where it’s coldest and farthest from the star. The closer to the star the researchers looked, the less water ice they found. NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI) Rocks, Dust, Ice Rushing Around
The star, cataloged HD 181327, is significantly younger than our Sun. It’s estimated to be 23 million years old, compared to the Sun’s more mature 4.6 billion years. The star is slightly more massive than the Sun, and it’s hotter, which led to the formation of a slightly larger system around it.
Webb’s observations confirm a significant gap between the star and its debris disk — a wide area that is free of dust. Farther out, its debris disk is similar to our solar system’s Kuiper Belt, where dwarf planets, comets, and other bits of ice and rock are found (and sometimes collide with one another). Billions of years ago, our Kuiper Belt was likely similar to this star’s debris disk.
“HD 181327 is a very active system,” Chen said. “There are regular, ongoing collisions in its debris disk. When those icy bodies collide, they release tiny particles of dusty water ice that are perfectly sized for Webb to detect.”
Frozen Water — Almost Everywhere
Water ice isn’t spread evenly throughout this system. The majority is found where it’s coldest and farthest from the star. “The outer area of the debris disk consists of over 20% water ice,” Xie said.
The closer in the researchers looked, the less water ice they found. Toward the middle of the debris disk, Webb detected about 8% water ice. Here, it’s likely that frozen water particles are produced slightly faster than they are destroyed. In the area of the debris disk closest to the star, Webb detected almost none. It’s likely that the star’s ultraviolet light vaporizes the closest specks of water ice. It’s also possible that rocks known as planetesimals have “locked up” frozen water in their interiors, which Webb can’t detect.
This team and many more researchers will continue to search for — and study — water ice in debris disks and actively forming planetary systems throughout our Milky Way galaxy. “The presence of water ice helps facilitate planet formation,” Xie said. “Icy materials may also ultimately be ‘delivered’ to terrestrial planets that may form over a couple hundred million years in systems like this.”
The researchers observed HD 181327 with Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), which is super-sensitive to extremely faint dust particles that can only be detected from space.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing 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 CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
To learn more about Webb, visit:
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Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated May 14, 2025 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By NASA
Curiosity Navigation Curiosity Home Mission Overview Where is Curiosity? Mission Updates Science Overview Instruments Highlights Exploration Goals News and Features Multimedia Curiosity Raw Images Images Videos Audio Mosaics More Resources Mars Missions Mars Sample Return Mars Perseverance Rover Mars Curiosity Rover MAVEN Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mars Odyssey More Mars Missions Mars Home 2 min read
Sols 4536-4538: Dusty Martian Magnets
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image, used to inspect the magnet on its MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager), a camera on the turret of tools at the end of the rover’s robotic arm. The main purpose of Curiosity’s MAHLI camera is to acquire close-up, high-resolution views of rocks and regolith in the field; it can focus on any target from about 0.8 inches (2.1 centimeters) to infinity. Curiosity used its Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Sept. 1, 2024 — Sol 4291, or Martian day 4,291 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 05:48:14 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Written by Remington Free, Operations Systems Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Earth planning date: Friday, May 9, 2025
I was on downlink today for SA-SPaH, our robotic arm team. We successfully completed a number of fun arm activities, including a DRT brushing and APXS observations of a bedrock target, and also completed a traverse of about 25 meters (about 82 feet). Exciting!
Today, our uplink team planned three sols of activities. On Sol 4536, we are using the arm to do some inspection imaging of the MAHLI magnet using Mastcam. This magnet allows us to determine whether or not the MAHLI cover has successfully opened or closed. These magnets accumulate a lot of Martian dust particles, so we periodically take imaging to inspect the quantity of dust and get a better understanding of the state of the hardware. I’ve included above an image of the MAHLI instrument, from our last inspection on Sol 4291. After the magnet inspection, we’ll do some more typical arm activities, which include some APXS placements, DRT brushing, and MAHLI imaging on targets of interest.
In this workspace, we are interested in targets characterizing the pale layered sulfate unit we’ve been driving on, as well as a target in the new ridge-forming unit. Beyond our arm activities, we’ll do additional science observations of the surface using Mastcam and ChemCam.
On Sol 4537, we’ll focus on driving! Prior to our drive, we’ll take some more scientific observations, including a Navcam cloud movie, Mastcam documentation of some geological units, and ChemCam LIBS on a ridge-forming unit. We have then planned a 21-meter drive (about 69 feet) to take us to a bedrock area of scientific interest. We’re excited because the terrain looks pretty benign, so we’re hoping it all goes smoothly!
Post-drive, we’ll take some Mastcam survey imaging of clasts and soils along the traverse. Finally on Sol 4538, we’ll aim our focus upwards and take a number of observations of the sky. We’ll start with a Navcam large dust-devil survey, a Mastcam tau measurement of the atmospheric optical depth, and a ChemCam passive sky observation to study atmospheric composition. Early the following morning, we’ll take some additional Navcam observations of clouds, and complete another Mastcam tau measurement of optical depth.
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By NASA
This artist’s concept depicts a magnetar – a type of neutron star with a strong magnetic field – losing material into space. Shown as thin green lines, the magnetic field lines influence the movement of charged material around the magnetar. NASA/JPL-Caltech Since the big bang, the early universe had hydrogen, helium, and a scant amount of lithium. Later, some heavier elements, including iron, were forged in stars. But one of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics is: How did the first elements heavier than iron, such as gold, get created and distributed throughout the universe?
“It’s a pretty fundamental question in terms of the origin of complex matter in the universe,” said Anirudh Patel, a doctoral student at Columbia University in New York. “It’s a fun puzzle that hasn’t actually been solved.”
Patel led a study using 20-year-old archival data from NASA and ESA telescopes that finds evidence for a surprising source of a large amount of these heavy elements: flares from highly magnetized neutron stars, called magnetars. The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Study authors estimate that magnetar giant flares could contribute up to 10% of the total abundance of elements heavier than iron in the galaxy. Since magnetars existed relatively early in the history of the universe, the first gold could have been made this way.
“It’s answering one of the questions of the century and solving a mystery using archival data that had been nearly forgotten,” said Eric Burns, study co-author and astrophysicist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
How could gold be made at a magnetar?
Neutron stars are the collapsed cores of stars that have exploded. They are so dense that one teaspoon of neutron star material, on Earth, would weigh as much as a billion tons. A magnetar is a neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field.
On rare occasions, magnetars release an enormous amount of high-energy radiation when they undergo “starquakes,” which, like earthquakes, fracture the neutron star’s crust. Starquakes may also be associated with powerful bursts of radiation called magnetar giant flares, which can even affect Earth’s atmosphere. Only three magnetar giant flares have been observed in the Milky Way and the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud, and seven outside.
Patel and colleagues, including his advisor Brian Metzger, professor at Columbia University and senior research scientist at the Flatiron Institute in New York, have been thinking about how radiation from giant flares could correspond to heavy elements forming there. This would happen through a “rapid process” of neutrons forging lighter atomic nuclei into heavier ones.
Protons define the element’s identity on the periodic table: hydrogen has one proton, helium has two, lithium has three, and so on. Atoms also have neutrons which do not affect identity, but do add mass. Sometimes when an atom captures an extra neutron the atom becomes unstable and a nuclear decay process happens that converts a neutron into a proton, moving the atom forward on the periodic table. This is how, for example, a gold atom could take on an extra neutron and then transform into mercury.
In the unique environment of a disrupted neutron star, in which the density of neutrons is extremely high, something even stranger happens: single atoms can rapidly capture so many neutrons that they undergo multiple decays, leading to the creation of a much heavier element like uranium.
When astronomers observed the collision of two neutron stars in 2017 using NASA telescopes and the Laser Interferomete Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO), and numerous telescopes on the ground and in space that followed up the initial discovery, they confirmed that this event could have created gold, platinum, and other heavy elements. But neutron star mergers happen too late in the universe’s history to explain the earliest gold and other heavy elements. Recent research by co-authors of the new study — Jakub Cehula of Charles University in Prague, Todd Thompson of The Ohio State University, and Metzger — has found that magnetar flares can heat and eject neutron star crustal material at high speeds, making them a potential source.
A rupture in the crust of a highly magnetized neutron star, shown here in an artist’s rendering, can trigger high-energy eruptions. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger New clues in old data
At first, Metzger and colleagues thought that the signature from the creation and distribution of heavy elements at a magnetar would appear in the visible and ultraviolet light, and published their predictions. But Burns in Louisiana wondered if there could be a gamma-ray signal bright enough to be detected, too. He asked Metzger and Patel to check, and they found that there could be such a signature.
“At some point, we said, ‘OK, we should ask the observers if they had seen any,’” Metzger said.
Burns looked up the gamma ray data from the last giant flare that has been observed, which was in December 2004. He realized that while scientists had explained the beginning of the outburst, they had also identified a smaller signal from the magnetar, in data from ESA (European Space Agency)’s INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL), a recently retired mission with NASA contributions. “It was noted at the time, but nobody had any conception of what it could be,” Burns said.
Metzger remembers that Burns thought he and Patel were “pulling his leg” because the prediction from their team’s model so closely matched the mystery signal in the 2004 data. In other words, the gamma ray signal detected over 20 years ago corresponded to what it should look like when heavy elements are created and then distributed in a magnetar giant flare.
Patel was so excited, “I wasn’t thinking about anything else for the next week or two. It was the only thing on my mind,” he said.
Researchers supported their conclusion using data from two NASA heliophysics missions: the retired RHESSI (Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager) and the ongoing NASA’s Wind satellite, which had also observed the magnetar giant flare. Other collaborators on the new study included Jared Goldberg at the Flatiron Institute.
Next steps in the magnetar gold rush
NASA’s forthcoming COSI (Compton Spectrometer and Imager) mission can follow up on these results. A wide-field gamma ray telescope, COSI is expected to launch in 2027 and will study energetic phenomena in the cosmos, such as magnetar giant flares. COSI will be able to identify individual elements created in these events, providing a new advancement in understanding the origin of the elements. It is one of many telescopes that can work together to look for “transient” changes across the universe.
Researchers will also follow up on other archival data to see if other secrets are hiding in observations of other magnetar giant flares.
“It very cool to think about how some of the stuff in my phone or my laptop was forged in this extreme explosion of the course of our galaxy’s history,” Patel said.
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