Contributor: Dr. Brielle Shope

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) illustrates its potential through three new detections of biological precursors in interstellar ices. Will Rocha and team, part of the JWST Observations of Young protoStars (JOYS+) project, detected a total of ten molecules in their ice form around forming stars. Previously inaccessible to humankind, the recently launched JWST provides astronomers access to infrared radiation at the highest levels of sensitivity and resolution. By looking at infrared radiation, astronomers can detect ices in space. The surfaces of these ices are where scientists believe to be the birthplace of complex molecules in space. The detections of these complex molecules on ices is further evidence of their formation on ice surfaces rather than solely in the gas-phase.

Contributor: Dr. Mélisse Bonfand

In 2019, a team of astronomers led by Drs. Adam Ginsburg and Brett McGuire detected the chemical fingerprints of table salt - Sodium Chloride (NaCl) - and other similar salty compounds, about 1500 light-years from Earth, in the dusty disk surrounding a young star in the Orion Nebula. Since then, eight more salty disks have been detected, suggesting that salt emission is not rare in star-forming environments.