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What the Webb Telescope Found Way Back in the Early Universe on This Week @NASA – July 7, 2023
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By NASA
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Avatars for Astronaut Health to Fly on NASA’s Artemis II
An organ chip for conducting bone marrow experiments in space. Emulate NASA announced a trailblazing experiment that aims to take personalized medicine to new heights. The experiment is part of a strategic plan to gather valuable scientific data during the Artemis II mission, enabling NASA to “know before we go” back to the lunar surface and on to Mars.
The AVATAR (A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response) investigation will use organ-on-a-chip devices, or organ chips, to study the effects of deep space radiation and microgravity on human health. The chips will contain cells from Artemis II astronauts and fly side-by-side with crew on their approximately 10-day journey around the Moon. This research, combined with other studies on the health and performance of Artemis II astronauts, will give NASA insight into how to best protect astronauts as exploration expands to the surface of the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
AVATAR is NASA’s visionary tissue chip experiment that will revolutionize the very way we will do science, medicine, and human multi-planetary exploration.”
Nicky Fox
Associate Administrator, NASA Science Mission Directorate
“AVATAR is NASA’s visionary tissue chip experiment that will revolutionize the very way we will do science, medicine, and human multi-planetary exploration,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Each tissue chip is a tiny sample uniquely created so that we can examine how the effects of deep space act on each human explorer before we go to ensure we pack the appropriate medical supplies tailored to each individual’s needs as we travel back to the Moon, and onward to Mars.”
The investigation is a collaboration between NASA, government agencies, and industry partners, leveraging commercial expertise to gain a deeper understanding of human biology and disease. This research could accelerate innovations in personalized healthcare, both for astronauts in space and patients on Earth.
Organ-on-a-chip: mimic for human health
Organ chips, also referred to as tissue chips or microphysiological systems, are roughly the size of a USB thumb drive and used to help understand — and then predict — how an individual might respond to a variety of stressors, such as radiation or medical treatments, including pharmaceuticals. Essentially, these small devices serve as “avatars” for human organs.
Organ chips contain living human cells that are grown to model the structures and functions of specific regions in human organs, such as the brain, lungs, heart, pancreas, and liver — they can beat like a heart, breathe like a lung, or metabolize like a liver. Tissue chips can be linked together to mimic how organs interact with each other, which is important for understanding how the whole human body responds to stressors or treatments.
Researchers and oncologists use human tissue chips today to understand how a specific patient’s cancer might react to different drugs or radiation treatments. To date, a standard milestone for organs-on-chips has been to keep human cells healthy for 30 days. However, NASA and other research institutions are pushing these boundaries by increasing the longevity of organ chips to a minimum of six months so that scientists can observe diseases and drug therapies over a longer period.
Bone marrow as bellwether
The Artemis II mission will use organ chips created using blood-forming stem and progenitor cells, which originate in the bone marrow, from Artemis II crew members.
Bone marrow is among the organs most sensitive to radiation exposure and, therefore, of central importance to human spaceflight. It also plays a vital role in the immune system, as it is the origin of all adult red and white blood cells, which is why researchers aim to understand how deep space radiation affects this organ.
Studies have shown that microgravity affects the development of bone marrow cells. Although the International Space Station operates in low Earth orbit, which is shielded from most cosmic and solar radiation by the Earth’s magnetosphere, astronauts often experience a loss of bone density. Given that Artemis II crew will be flying beyond this protective layer, AVATAR researchers also seek to understand how the combined stressors of deep space radiation and microgravity affect the developing cells.
To make the bone marrow organ chips, Artemis II astronauts will first donate platelets to a local healthcare system. The cells remaining from their samples will contain a small percentage of bone marrow-derived stem and progenitor cells. NASA-funded scientists at Emulate, Inc., which developed the organ chip technology used in AVATAR, will purify these cells with magnetic beads that bind specifically to them. The purified cells will then be placed in the bone marrow chips next to blood vessel cells and other supporting cells to model the structure and function of the bone marrow.
Investigating how radiation affects the bone marrow can provide insights into how radiation therapy and other DNA-damaging agents, such as chemotherapeutic drugs, impair blood cell formation. Its significance for both spaceflight and medicine on Earth makes the bone marrow an ideal organ to study in the Artemis II AVATAR project.
Passenger for research
“For NASA, organ chips could provide vital data for protecting astronaut health on deep space missions,” said Lisa Carnell, director of NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences division at NASA Headquarters. “As we go farther and stay longer in space, crew will have only limited access to on-site clinical healthcare. Therefore, it’ll be critical to understand if there are unique and specific healthcare needs of each astronaut, so that we can send the right supplies with them on future missions.”
During the Artemis II mission, the organ chips will be secured in a custom payload developed by Space Tango and mounted inside the capsule during the mission. The battery-powered payload will maintain automated environmental control and media delivery to the organ chips throughout the flight.
For NASA, organ chips could provide vital data for protecting astronaut health on deep space missions.”
Lisa Carnell
Director of NASA’s Biological and Physical Sciences Division
Upon return, researchers at Emulate will examine how spaceflight affected the bone marrow chips by performing single-cell RNA sequencing, a powerful technique that measures how thousands of genes change within individual cells. The scientists will compare data from the flight samples to measurements of crew cells used in a ground-based immunology study happening simultaneously. This will provide the most detailed look at the impact of spaceflight and deep space radiation on developing blood cells to date.
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Explore This Section Earth Earth Observer Editor’s Corner Feature Articles Meeting Summaries News Science in the News Calendars In Memoriam Announcements More Archives Conference Schedules Style Guide 13 min read
The Earth Observer Editor’s Corner: July–September 2025
NOTE TO READERS: After more than three decades associated with or directly employed by NASA, Steve Platnick [GSFC—Deputy Director for Atmospheres, Earth Sciences Division] stepped down effective August 8, 2025. Steve began his civil servant career at GSFC in 2002, but his GSFC association went back to 1993, first as a contractor and then as one of the earliest employees of the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET). During his time at NASA, Steve played an integral role in the sustainability and advancement of NASA’s Earth Observing System platforms and data. He was actively involved in the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Science Team, where he helped advance several key components of the MODIS instrument. He was also the NASA Lead/co-Lead for the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP), Atmosphere Discipline from 2012–2020 where he focused on operational cloud optical and microphysical products.
In 2008, Steve became the Earth Observing System (EOS) Senior Project Scientist. In this role, he led the EOS Project Science Office that supported airborne sensors, ground networks, and calibration labs. The Kudos article titled “Steve Platnick Steps Down from NASA After 34 Years of Service” includes a more detailed account of Steve’s career and includes a list of awards he has received.
Steve’s departure leaves a vacancy in the author’s chair for “The Editor’s Corner” – another role Steve filled as EOS Senior Project Scientist. Barry Lefer [NASA Headquarters—Associate Director of Research, Earth Science Division] graciously agreed to serve as guest author of the editorial in the current compilation. I want to thank Steve for all his support for The Earth Observer over the years and thank Barry for stepping in as the author of “The Editor’s Corner” for the time being.
–Alan Ward, Executive Editor, The Earth Observer
I begin this editorial with news of a successful Earth science launch. At 5:40 PM Indian Standard Time (IST), or 8:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), on July 30, 2025, the joint NASA–Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Synthetic Aperture Radar, or NISAR, mission launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on India’s southeastern coast aboard an ISRO Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket 5. The ISRO ground controllers began communicating with NISAR about 20 minutes after launch, at just after 8:29 AM EDT, and confirmed it is operating as expected.
NISAR will use two different radar frequencies (L-band SAR and S-band SAR) to penetrate clouds and forest canopies. Including L-band and S-band radars on one satellite is an evolution in SAR airborne and space-based missions that, for NASA, started in 1978 with the launch of Seasat. In 2012, ISRO began launching SAR missions starting with Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT-1), followed by RISAT-1A in 2022, to support a wide range of applications in India.
Combining the data from these two radars will allow researchers to systematically and globally map Earth – measuring changes of our planet’s surface down to a centimeter (~0.4 inches). With this detailed view, researchers will have an unprecedented ability to observe and measure complex processes from ecosystem disturbances to natural hazards to groundwater issues. All NISAR science data will be freely available and open to the public.
Following the successful launch, NISAR entered an approximately 90-day commissioning phase to test out systems before science operations begin. A key milestone of that phase was the completion of the deployment of the 39-ft (12-m) radar antenna reflector on August 15 – see Video. The process began on August 9, when the satellite’s boom, which had been tucked close to its main body, started unfolding one joint at a time until it was fully extended about four days later. The reflector assembly is mounted at the end of the boom. On August 15, small explosive bolts that held the reflector assembly in place were fired, enabling the antenna to begin a process called the bloom – its unfurling by the release of tension stored in its flexible frame while stowed like an umbrella. Subsequent activation of motors and cables pulled the antenna into its final, locked position.
Video: NISAR mission team members at NASA JPL, working with colleagues in India, executed the deployment of the satellite’s radar antenna reflector on Aug. 15, 2025. About 39 feet (12 meters) in diameter, the reflector directs microwave pulses from NISAR’s two radars toward Earth and receives the return signals. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The radar reflector will be used to direct and receive microwave signals from the two radars. By interpreting the differences between the L-band and S-band measurements, researchers will be able to discern characteristics about the surface below. As NISAR passes over the same locations twice every 12 days, scientists can evaluate how those characteristics have changed over time to reveal new insights about Earth’s dynamic surfaces.
With the radar reflector now in full bloom, scientists have turned their attention to tuning and testing the radar and preparing NISAR for Science Operations, which are anticipated to start around the beginning of November. Congratulations to the NISAR team on a successful launch and deployment of the radar reflector. Along with the science community, I am excited to see what new discoveries will result from the data collected by the first Earth System Observatory mission.
Turning now to news from active missions, the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission has collected over 10 years of global L-band radiometry observations that have resulted in surface soil moisture, vegetation optical depth (VOD), and freeze/thaw state estimates that outperform past and current products. A decade of SMAP soil moisture observations has led to scientific achievements, including quantifying the linkages of the three main metabolic cycles (e.g., carbon, water, and energy) on land. The data have been widely used by the Earth system science community to improve drought assessments and flood prediction as well as the accuracy of numerical weather prediction models.
SMAP’s Early Adopter program has helped connect SMAP data with people and organizations that need it. The program has increased the awareness of SMAP mission products, broadened the user community, increased collaboration with potential users, improved knowledge of SMAP data product capabilities, and expedited the distribution and uses of mission products for a suite of 16 products available. For example, the L-band VOD, which is related to water content in vegetation, is being used to better understand water exchanges in the soil–vegetation–atmosphere continuum.
The SMAP Active–Passive (AP) algorithm – based on data from SMAP and the European Copernicus Program Sentinel-1 C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) – will be adapted to work with L-band data from the newly launched NISAR mission. The result will be estimates of global soil moisture at a spatial resolution of 1 km (0.62 mi) or better approximately once per week.
In addition, the data collected during the SMAP mission would be continued and further enhanced by the European Union’s Copernicus Imaging Microwave Radiometer (CIMR) mission if it launches. This proposed multichannel microwave radiometry observatory includes L-band and four other microwave channels sharing a large mesh reflector – like the one used with SMAP. The plan calls for CIMR to follow a similar approach as SMAP for RFI detection and meet the instrument thermal noise and data latency of SMAP for next-mission desired characteristics.
To learn more about what SMAP has accomplished see “A Decade of Global Water Cycle Monitoring: NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission.”
NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) has been the “gold standard” for atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) observations from space for over a decade. The data returned from OCO-2 provide insights into plant health, forest management, forecasting crop yields, fire-risk models, and anticipating droughts.
OCO-3, constructed from spare parts left after OCO-2, was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2019, where it has operated for over five years. OCO-3 extends the global CO2 measurement record while adding new capabilities made possible by being on ISS (e.g., detailed views of urban and tropical regions).
The overarching OCO mission hasn’t just about been about data and hardware. Although both those elements are parts of the story, the human stories woven through the mission’s successes and setbacks are really what holds the mission together. The feature, “A Tapestry of Tales: 10th Anniversary Reflections from NASA’s OCO-2 Mission,” sheds light on some of these personal stories from the OCO-2 and OCO-3 missions.
The individual tales contained in this article reveal the grit and determination behind the scenes of the success of OCO-2 and OCO-3, from the anxiety and excitement surrounding the launch of OCO-2, to moments of fieldwork in the Nevada desert, to internships where wildfire responders turned to OCO-2 data to improve fire-risk models. Taken together, these stories form a “tapestry” that reveals how the OCO-2 and OCO-3 missions continue to illuminate the dynamics of Earth’s atmosphere – one breath at a time.
These personal perspectives underscore that science is not just numbers; it’s people pushing boundaries, navigating failure, and inspiring ways to make our planet safer and healthier. In a time such as this, this is an important reminder.
The joint NASA–U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landsat program has been a cornerstone of Earth observation for over 50 years. On July 13, Landsat 9 collected its millionth image: a stunning shot of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska – see Figure. Landsat 9, the most recent satellite in the Landsat series, orbits Earth alongside Landsat 8. Together, these satellites collect invaluable data about Earth’s changing land surface every eight days.
Figure: This Landsat 9 image showing the Beaufort Sea shoreline off Alaska and Canada is just one of the scenes captured and processed on July 13, 2025— the same day the USGS EROS archive reached a milestone of one million Landsat 9 Level-1 products. This false color image was made with bands 6, 5, and 4 from the Operational Land Imager. This remote area allows the pristine wilderness environment to support a diverse wildlife and unique ecosystem that includes various species of mammals, birds, and fish. Landsat Level-1 products from Landsat 1 through Landsat 9 can be downloaded at no charge from a number of systems – visit the Landsat Data Access webpage to learn more. Credit: Public Domain After collecting more than 3.3 million images over the course of more than 26 years in orbit, Landsat 7 was decommissioned on June 4, 2025. A YouTube video released at the time of decommissioning provides a concise visual summary of the Landsat 7 mission’s achievements – and the technical challenges overcome. In addition, The Earth Observer did a feature for the 20th anniversary of Landsat 7 in the July–August 2019 issue, called “The Living Legacy of Landsat 7: Still Going Strong After 20 Years in Orbit” [Volume 31, Issue 4, pp. 4–14] that is a useful resource to learn more about the history and achievements (through 20 years) of the mission.
One of the strengths of the Landsat program is its potential for data integration with other satellites. The Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) product exemplifies this collaborative approach by combining data from Landsat 8 and 9 with data from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 A, B, and C missions. Whereas Landsat alone has a repeat time of eight days (i.e., combining Landsat 8 and 9 data); the combined HLS dataset provides imagery for the same location on Earth every 1.6 days – enabling researchers to monitor short-term changes in Earth’s land surface much more effectively than using Landsat or Sentinel-2 data alone.
HLS became one of the most-downloaded NASA data products in fiscal year 2024, with continued growth on the horizon. In February 2025, the program expanded with nine new vegetation indices based on HLS data, with historical processing back to 2013 scheduled for completion by early 2026. Low-latency HLS products will also be available in late 2026. For the full story of how HLS came to be – see the feature: “Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2: Collaboration Drives Innovation.”
Following a 13-month hibernation, the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) mission was reinstalled to its original location aboard the ISS and resumed operations on April 22, 2024. Since this storage period, GEDI’s lasers have been operating nominally and the mission has continued to produce high-quality observations of the Earth’s three-dimensional structure, amassing 33 billion land surface returns as of November 27, 2024.
The mission team has been actively processing and releasing post-storage data to the public, with Version 2.1 – GEDI L1B, L2A, L2B, and L4A data products, which include data through November 2024, all available for download. The new L4C footprint-level Waveform Structural Complexity Index (WSCI) product using pre-storage data has also been released. Looking ahead, the team is preparing Version 3.0 (V3) of all data products, which will incorporate post-storage data while improving quality filtering, geolocation accuracy, and algorithm performance.
The 2025 GEDI Science Team Meeting (STM) brought together the mission science team, competed science team, representatives from the distributed active archive centers (DAACs), collaborators, stakeholders, and data users. Notably, it marked the first in-person gathering of the second competed science team, who shared updates on their research projects. The STM held an important space for brainstorming, knowledge-sharing, and discussion as the GEDI mission continues to flourish in its second epoch. To learn more, see “Summary of the 2025 GEDI Science Team Meeting.”
Shifting focus to the boreal forests of North America, the NASA Arctic–Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) is now in its final year, marking the end of a decade-long scientific endeavor that has transformed our understanding of environmental change in Alaska and western Canada. This ambitious campaign, funded primarily by NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology Program, has successfully progressed through three distinct phases: ecosystem dynamics (2015–2018), ecosystem services (2017–2022), and the current analysis and synthesis phase (2023–present).
As ABoVE approaches its conclusion, the program has grown to encompass 67 NASA-funded projects with over 1000 participating researchers – a testament to the collaborative scale required to address complex Arctic–boreal ecosystem questions. The program’s integrated approach, combining field research, airborne campaigns, and satellite remote sensing, has generated unprecedented insights into how environmental changes in these northern regions affect both vulnerable ecosystems and society.
The recent 11th – and final – ABoVE Science Team Meeting was an opportunity to showcase the program’s evolution from data collection to synthesis, highlighting successful community engagement initiatives, cutting-edge research on carbon dynamics and ecosystem responses, and innovative science communication strategies that have made this complex research accessible to diverse audiences. With synthesis activities now underway, ABoVE is positioned to deliver comprehensive insights that will inform Arctic and boreal research for years to come. To learn more, see “Summary of the 11th and Final ABoVE Science Team Meeting.”
Last but certainly not least, I want to both recognize and congratulate Compton J. Tucker [GSFC—Senior Researcher]. Compton retired from NASA in March 2025 after 48 years of public service, and then in April, was among 149 newly elected members to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) – which is one of the highest honors in American science. This recognition from NAS brings Compton’s career full circle. He came to GSFC as a NAS postdoc before joining NASA as a civil servant. Compton is a pioneer in the field of satellite-based environmental analysis, using data from various Landsat missions and from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) instrument. His research has focused on global photosynthesis on land, determining land cover, monitoring droughts and food security, and evaluating ecologically coupled disease outbreaks. The Kudos, “Compton J. Tucker Retires from NASA and is Named NAS Fellow,” provides more details about Compton’s research achievements and all of the other scientific awards and honors received throughout his career.
Barry Lefer
Associate Director of Research, Earth Science Division
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Explore Webb Science James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NASA’s Webb Observes Immense… 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 Webb Timeline Science Overview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycle Other Worlds Science Explainers 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 Webb’s First Images Team International Team People Of Webb More For the Media For Scientists For Educators For Fun/Learning 6 Min Read NASA’s Webb Observes Immense Stellar Jet on Outskirts of Our Milky Way
Webb’s image of the enormous stellar jet in Sh2-284 provides evidence that protostellar jets scale with the mass of their parent stars—the more massive the stellar engine driving the plasma, the larger the resulting jet. Full image shown below. Credits:
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Yu Cheng (NAOJ); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) A blowtorch of seething gasses erupting from a volcanically growing monster star has been captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Stretching across 8 light-years, the length of the stellar eruption is approximately twice the distance between our Sun and the next nearest stars, the Alpha Centauri system. The size and strength of this particular stellar jet, located in a nebula known as Sharpless 2-284 (Sh2-284 for short), qualifies it as rare, say researchers.
Streaking across space at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour, the outflow resembles a double-bladed dueling lightsaber from the Star Wars films. The central protostar, weighing as much as ten of our Suns, is located 15,000 light-years away in the outer reaches of our galaxy.
The Webb discovery was serendipitous. “We didn’t really know there was a massive star with this kind of super-jet out there before the observation. Such a spectacular outflow of molecular hydrogen from a massive star is rare in other regions of our galaxy,” said lead author Yu Cheng of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
Image A: Stellar Jet in Sh2-284 (NIRCam Image)
Webb’s image of the enormous stellar jet in Sh2-284 provides evidence that protostellar jets scale with the mass of their parent stars—the more massive the stellar engine driving the plasma, the larger the resulting jet. Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Yu Cheng (NAOJ); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) This unique class of stellar fireworks are highly collimated jets of plasma shooting out from newly forming stars. Such jetted outflows are a star’s spectacular “birth announcement” to the universe. Some of the infalling gas building up around the central star is blasted along the star’s spin axis, likely under the influence of magnetic fields.
Today, while hundreds of protostellar jets have been observed, these are mainly from low-mass stars. These spindle-like jets offer clues into the nature of newly forming stars. The energetics, narrowness, and evolutionary time scales of protostellar jets all serve to constrain models of the environment and physical properties of the young star powering the outflow.
“I was really surprised at the order, symmetry, and size of the jet when we first looked at it,” said co-author Jonathan Tan of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Its detection offers evidence that protostellar jets must scale up with the mass of the star powering them. The more massive the stellar engine propelling the plasma, the larger the gusher’s size.
The jet’s detailed filamentary structure, captured by Webb’s crisp resolution in infrared light, is evidence the jet is plowing into interstellar dust and gas. This creates separate knots, bow shocks, and linear chains.
The tips of the jet, lying in opposite directions, encapsulate the history of the star’s formation. “Originally the material was close into the star, but over 100,000 years the tips were propagating out, and then the stuff behind is a younger outflow,” said Tan.
Outlier
At nearly twice the distance from the galactic center as our Sun, the host proto-cluster that’s home to the voracious jet is on the periphery of our Milky Way galaxy.
Within the cluster, a few hundred stars are still forming. Being in the galactic hinterlands means the stars are deficient in heavier elements beyond hydrogen and helium. This is measured as metallicity, which gradually increases over cosmic time as each passing stellar generation expels end products of nuclear fusion through winds and supernovae. The low metallicity of Sh2-284 is a reflection of its relatively pristine nature, making it a local analog for the environments in the early universe that were also deficient in heavier elements.
“Massive stars, like the one found inside this cluster, have very important influences on the evolution of galaxies. Our discovery is shedding light on the formation mechanism of massive stars in low metallicity environments, so we can use this massive star as a laboratory to study what was going on in earlier cosmic history,” said Cheng.
Unrolling Stellar Tapestry
Stellar jets, which are powered by the gravitational energy released as a star grows in mass, encode the formation history of the protostar.
“Webb’s new images are telling us that the formation of massive stars in such environments could proceed via a relatively stable disk around the star that is expected in theoretical models of star formation known as core accretion,” said Tan. “Once we found a massive star launching these jets, we realized we could use the Webb observations to test theories of massive star formation. We developed new theoretical core accretion models that were fit to the data, to basically tell us what kind of star is in the center. These models imply that the star is about 10 times the mass of the Sun and is still growing and has been powering this outflow.”
For more than 30 years, astronomers have disagreed about how massive stars form. Some think a massive star requires a very chaotic process, called competitive accretion.
In the competitive accretion model, material falls in from many different directions so that the orientation of the disk changes over time. The outflow is launched perpendicularly, above and below the disk, and so would also appear to twist and turn in different directions.
“However, what we’ve seen here, because we’ve got the whole history – a tapestry of the story – is that the opposite sides of the jets are nearly 180 degrees apart from each other. That tells us that this central disk is held steady and validates a prediction of the core accretion theory,” said Tan.
Where there’s one massive star, there could be others in this outer frontier of the Milky Way. Other massive stars may not yet have reached the point of firing off Roman-candle-style outflows. Data from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile, also presented in this study, has found another dense stellar core that could be in an earlier stage of construction.
The paper has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.
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).
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https://science.nasa.gov/webb
Related Information
View more: Webb images of other protostar outflows – HH 49/50, L483, HH 46/47, and HH 211
View more: Data visualization of protostar outflows – HH 49/50
Animation Video – “Exploring Star and Planet Formation”
Explore the jets emitted by young stars in multiple wavelengths: ViewSpace Interactive
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Stellar Jet in Sh2-284 (NIRCam Image)
Webb’s image of the enormous stellar jet in Sh2-284 provides evidence that protostellar jets scale with the mass of their parent stars–the more massive the stellar engine driving the plasma, the larger the resulting jet.
Stellar Jet in Sh2-284 (NIRCam Compass Image)
This image of the stellar jet in Sh2-284, captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.
Immense Stellar Jet in Sh2-284
This video shows the relative size of two different protostellar jets imaged by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The first image shown is an extremely large protostellar jet located in Sh2-284, 15,000 light-years away from Earth. The outflows from the massive central prot…
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Last Updated Sep 10, 2025 Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Contact Media Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
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Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
Christine Pulliam
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland
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