Astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery of over 100 new asteroids located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, using the James Webb Space Telescope operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). These newly found asteroids are the smallest ever identified, previously undetectable by ground-based telescopes.
According to a press release by NASA on December 20, a team of researchers led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology observed a total of 138 new asteroids with the Webb Space Telescope.
These asteroids vary in size from that of a bus to the size of a sports stadium, marking the first time astronomers have been able to observe such small asteroids in the main asteroid belt using ground-based telescopes.
Studying the different sizes of asteroids in the main asteroid belt provides valuable insights into how asteroids evolve over time due to collisions. This process sheds light on how some asteroids in the solar system have escaped the main asteroid belt and even on how meteorites may potentially impact Earth.
Tom Greene, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, commented, “We now have a better understanding of how smaller celestial bodies within the main asteroid belt form and how many there may be. These smaller asteroids, possibly formed from collisions between larger asteroids in the main asteroid belt, could potentially drift towards Earth and the Sun.”
Another astrophysicist at the center and a member of the Asteroid Threat Assessment Project, Jessie Dotson, expressed excitement over the Webb Space Telescope’s capability to gather asteroid-related data.
Dotson stated, “Understanding the sizes, quantities, and evolutionary history of the smaller asteroids within the main asteroid belt provides crucial background information for studying planetary defense in relation to near-Earth asteroids.”
The research team responsible for discovering these new asteroids has developed a method to analyze images captured by the Webb Space Telescope to identify potential asteroids inadvertently captured in the telescope’s field of view.
Using this new image processing technique, they examined over 10,000 images of the star TRAPPIST-1, originally taken to study the atmospheres around planets orbiting the star in search of extraterrestrial life.
Asteroids appear brighter in infrared light (a wavelength detectable by the Webb Space Telescope) compared to visible light, aiding in the revelation of previously undiscovered asteroids within the main asteroid belt.
NASA plans to utilize infrared light in the upcoming Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission. The Near-Earth Object Surveyor is the first telescope specifically designed to identify potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroids and comets.
The research findings were published on December 9 in the journal “Nature.”