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\u00a0<\/p>\nEpisode description:\u00a0<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope is hard at work answering our biggest questions about the birth of our universe and faraway galaxies. But some astronomers are pointing its powerful eyes much closer to home. In this episode, Caltech astronomer Katherine de Kleer explains how Webb is rewriting our understanding of objects within our solar system\u2013from space rocks in the asteroid belt to the icy and volcanic moons of Jupiter and Saturn.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u00a0HOST JACOB PINTER: You\u2019re listening to NASA\u2019s Curious Universe. I\u2019m your host, Jacob Pinter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Music: Eliza\u2019s Daydream by Tim Harvest and Zach Rowan]\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope is allowing us to look further into the depths of space\u2026 and further back in time\u2026 than ever before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Webb broadcast archival: The largest, most powerful telescope ever sent away from our planet\u2026]\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: It\u2019s helping us answer big questions about black holes, galaxies, even the birth of our universe.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Webb broadcast archival: We want to look back and see some of the first stars and galaxies born in the early universe. What we call cosmic dawn\u2026]\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: Now, this is all stuff that you definitely cannot see with your naked eye.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But some scientists are pointing Webb in a different direction\u2026 a little closer to home, at objects within our solar system.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Think about Jupiter, which\u00a0you definitely can see from here on Earth with a regular store-bought telescope. And even with your naked eye sometimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, to hear what scientists are\u00a0learning from Webb,\u00a0I called up Katherine de Kleer. She\u2019s an astronomer at Caltech \u2026 who focuses on our solar system.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When she was a student, Katherine wasn\u2019t sold on studying planets right away. Like any good budding astronomer, she was more into galaxies and stars at first. Until she had the chance to use the Keck observatory in Hawaii to look at our solar system\u2019s gas giants.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE DE KLEER: And my PhD advisor said, why don\u2019t we just quickly look over at Io, Jupiter\u2019s moon and just kind of see what it\u2019s up to? And so, we pointed the telescope at Io, and we took this image, and the image that came up on the screen was a picture of this moon with all these little bright spots on it. \u00a0<\/p>\n
[SFX: Rumbling volcanos, bubbling lava]\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: And all those bright spots are heat coming off of individual volcanoes on Io, and from night to night, I learned you could see how much heat is coming off of which volcanoes and how that\u2019s changing over time, and you can track its eruptions. And I did not realize until that moment that you could ask the same sorts of questions that you would ask about Earth, about other objects in the solar system, that you could learn about their atmospheric dynamics, you could study their volcanism. And when I realized that that was possible with telescopes, I was sold.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: When Webb launched, Katherine was super excited. It took scientists decades to design, build and launch the telescope. This kind of thing doesn\u2019t happen very often.\u00a0 Whenever a new NASA flagship telescope launches, it\u2019s a big deal for astronomers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: It is your opportunity to make some big advance, not just some little incremental improvement on our understanding, but take a real step forward in terms of what we know about the solar system or the universe. And so, I think astronomers are always kind of thinking about what is going to be the big advance in my field that\u2019s gonna come out of this telescope.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: Now, there are a lot of telescopes right here on Earth, in observatories around the world. And you might be wondering, what makes Webb so special? Why do you need a fancy space telescope to look at stuff that is pretty close to us, relatively speaking? Katherine says it\u2019s a fair question.\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: For much of astrophysics, part of what gives the James Webb Space Telescope its edge is that it can look at really, really, really faint things.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: That\u2019s because Webb can see beyond visible light\u2026\u00a0 into the infrared end of the spectrum. That lets it spot dimmer, more distant objects than most telescopes can.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: But solar system objects tend to be extremely bright. You know, you can look up in the sky and see plenty of them at night, if you know where to look.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: And on top of that \u2026 the James Webb space telescope \u2026 as you may have guessed from the name \u2026\u00a0 is\u2026 in space!\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: So, one of the biggest advantages we get for bright solar system objects from James Webb is that it allows us to observe without the Earth\u2019s atmosphere in the way.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: Looking up through Earth\u2019s atmosphere muddies the view for ground-based telescopes. You just can\u2019t see all the details Katherine needs to without going up into space. For example, Katherine is looking for signs of water on asteroids and moons\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Music: Quick Calculations by Tim Harvest and Zach Rowan]\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: That particular region of the spectrum happens to be blocked by, unsurprisingly, water in Earth\u2019s atmosphere, as well as some carbon dioxide, but with James Webb, we don\u2019t have that in the way, and so we can get access to this information that we couldn\u2019t see before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: But there\u2019s a catch for solar system astronomers like Katherine\u2026\u00a0 space telescopes are designed first and foremost to look deep into space\u2026 at those faint objects she mentioned.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: It is a fairly universal phenomenon with new telescopes that they\u2019re basically never designed primarily with solar system objects in mind. And actually, James Webb did better than most observatories in terms of incorporating Solar System scientists from the beginning to make sure these very unusual things that we need were taken into account.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: So, let\u2019s talk about the unusual things\u2026\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
For one, close-up objects, like planets appear to move much faster relative to Webb\u2019s position in space than faraway galaxies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can get a taste of this in a car driving down the highway. When you\u2019re going fast and you look out toward the horizon, it\u2019s easy to keep track of one tree that\u2019s way out there. But if you shift your vision and look at the side of the road, it looks like everything is just whipping by.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, to get a good look at everything whipping by, Webb has\u00a0to really rev up its tracking speed. And that\u2019s not the only issue.\u00a0Some nearby objects are just too bright for Webb to look at. In some modes, the telescope\u2019s detector will get completely blinded by the light.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
To work out the bugs, Katherine got the opportunity to test the telescope before almost anybody else, to make sure it was ready for primetime for solar system astronomers. So, she aimed at Jupiter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
And it was sort of a full-circle moment for her\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: The part of it that I was kind of in charge of was, in fact, the observations of Io, the volcanic moon I mentioned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: And what did you see, and what did it feel like to use this new toy for the first time?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Yeah, I was thrilled. So when they start doing the scheduling, you know, first they have these different windows when it might be scheduled, and they\u2019ll tell you it could be on August 12, or maybe it\u2019ll be on August 14, or maybe it\u2019ll be on August 16, and you\u2019re kind of waiting there, and then it gets actually scheduled. And, you know, I had it on my calendar, and I, you know, I think I was at a party, and I was telling people James Webb is observing Io for me right this second.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: Were they impressed?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Oh yeah, absolutely.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: And what did you see?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: So for solar system objects, because we\u2019ve also sent spacecraft to some of them, it won\u2019t be the first time we\u2019ve observed that object from above Earth\u2019s atmosphere, at least for the major planets and moons, but James Webb has access to certain wavelengths where spacecraft instruments have never covered. So specifically for the case of Io and the Jupiter system, this kind of short end of the mid-infrared range was not covered by any of the missions that had gone by or to the Jupiter system. And so, we got this kind of little missing piece of the spectrum of Io\u2019s surface and saw these big absorption features from the sulfur dioxide frost that coats Io\u2019s\u00a0surface. And we knew that the sulfur dioxide was there, but we hadn\u2019t seen these particular big features before, and they are potentially giving us information on the texture of the surface frost, as well as maybe even will tell us whether there is a thin frost layer overlying a lava flow, for example, compared to just a thick frost layer that goes down for meters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: Since then, Katherine has used Webb to explore all over the solar system. So, I had tons of questions for her, but I started by asking her for a tour of our solar system through Webb\u2019s eyes, starting with asteroids.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Music: Curious Universe stinger]\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: So, to start with, the asteroids are, we think of them as these leftover objects from the period of planet formation.\u00a0And I think on many fronts, James Webb is answering questions about the time of formation, right, the earliest universe. Also the early phases of forming solar systems around other stars. \u00a0<\/p>\n
[Music: New Patterns by Tim Harvest and Zach Rowan]\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: It can also tell us about the early stages of our own solar system, even though that happened, you know, four and a half billion years ago, because we can study the remnants from that period.\u00a0So, we find those remnants all across the solar system. The icy outer Solar System ones are called the Kuiper Belt objects, but the inner rocky ones are the asteroids, and the majority of the asteroids reside in the main\u00a0 asteroid belt, which is between Mars and Jupiter, and it\u2019s this collection of rocky objects that are basically material that condensed out of the disk that the planets formed out of, and have survived somewhat intact, I won\u2019t say fully intact, because most of them are actually fragments, but they haven\u2019t evolved, you know, to form atmospheres and oceans and all these things that would have totally erased the kind of initial conditions, right? So, they\u2019re kind of chemically intact, let\u2019s say.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
[SFX: Asteroids whooshing through space, colliding]\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: The solar system objects formed in one particular distance from the Sun, one particular place or orbit, and then the solar system went through this crazy dynamical time where the planets were all moving from the orbits they started at to the orbits they\u2019re at today. And during that process, all these little objects that condensed out of our protoplanetary disk, we call them planetesimals, they got thrown around all over the place. And now many of the ones from the icy outer reaches of the solar system got thrown inwards, for example, and now we find them in the asteroid belt and in some other places. And they can tell us about what kind of chemistry was going on as the planets were forming. They can tell us about the building blocks of Earth and other planets. And they can also tell us about this process of the planets moving and throwing all these little things around. We can kind of get insight into how that process took place, based on where all these little objects are today compared to where they formed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: You were talking earlier about how the James Webb Space Telescope is kind of uniquely positioned to tell us what objects in the solar system are made of. So, when you point James Webb at an asteroid, you know, what are there like details in the makeup of these asteroids that you\u2019re seeing that are new details, or that you\u2019re seeing in a different way than you have before?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Yeah, so in the mid infrared in particular, we get information on the minerals that make up the surfaces of these asteroids, and that\u2019s information that we haven\u2019t had at this level of detail. So, for example, most of these asteroids are actually made up of minerals that are broadly termed silicates. So, this is material like a lava flow or like Earth\u2019s mantle. It is dominated by a mineral called olivine, which, as a gemstone, is called peridot, and also makes up Earth\u2019s mantle. So that\u2019s kind of the dominant mineral that we see, but it comes in all these different forms, and James Webb actually lets us tell which form we\u2019re seeing which can tell you how close to the Sun this mineral originated from.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: Wow. It\u2019s interesting to think about this mineral that\u2019s so common on Earth, you know, in the mantle, below the surface, and then seeing it on these little rocks floating out in the rest of the solar system too, right?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Yeah, it\u2019s amazing how kind of universal certain types of chemistry are.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: And kind of by a similar token, scientists are using James Webb to study protoplanetary disks that eventually become basically solar systems like ours, right? And in some cases, are finding similar, similar materials there that you find left over from the formation of the solar system?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: That\u2019s exactly right. And I think that because of what James Webb and other telescopes are telling us about protoplanetary disks as well as our solar system, that this kind of scientific area of understanding how planets form is one of the most exciting and fast-moving areas right now. And so, you mentioned James Webb is looking at these protoplanetary disks. They are also looking at the heat coming off of those disks, just like we\u2019re looking at the heat coming off of asteroids. And they are looking for the exact same signatures that we\u2019re looking for on asteroids. So, you have these discs that are basically, it\u2019s the same material as the asteroids just four plus billion years ago. And you\u2019re looking at the mineral olivine in most of those as well, and you\u2019re looking at the exact same signatures. And so, I think it\u2019s pretty cool that you can basically do the same science on a 100-kilometer object in the asteroid belt as you\u2019re doing on an entire forming solar system.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Music: Positive Arc by Tim Harvest and Zach Rowan]\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: As we tour the solar system, let\u2019s take a look at Jupiter\u2019s four closest moons, which are called the Galilean moons. I think that a lot of people give them short shrift because they are moons and not planets, but there\u2019s just a lot going on. Yu know, there\u2019s volcanoes and thick sheets of ice and in some cases, liquid water deep underneath the surface. So, what do you want to know about these moons of Jupiter? And what are you finding out?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: You\u2019re absolutely right that the moons are just these fascinating worlds in their own right. And I think that certainly the solar system science community has fully come around to that idea. You know, if you look back at the spacecraft missions, that the kind of previous generations of spacecraft missions, they were largely targeting the planets. But now the next generation of missions is very specifically targeting the moons. We have Europa Clipper going to Europa. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Europa Clipper broadcast archival: And liftoff, liftoff of Falcon Heavy with Europa Clipper, unveiling the mysteries of an enormous ocean lurking beneath the icy crust of Jupiter\u2019s moon, Europa\u2026]\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Europe has the JUICE mission that is going to the Galilean moons. And this kind of reflects this recognition that the moons are just these fascinating worlds in their own right, and in many ways, are more Earth-like than the planets, certainly more so than the giant planets. We want to understand, you know, how they formed, what they\u2019re made of. A central question that people are interested in is whether they\u2019re habitable. So, the outer three of the Galilean moons, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are all thought to have oceans underneath thick ice shells, and those oceans are perhaps thought to have the conditions that is needed for life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: If we\u2019re sending probes there, specifically, I guess what is Webb\u2019s role in working with those probes? Like, what can Webb do that those spacecraft won\u2019t be able to do? Or, how can Webb kind of fill in the gaps in what they\u2019re seeing?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Yeah, that\u2019s a great question, and it is kind of a central question in solar system astronomy. One is that simply knowing that something is there well in advance of the spacecraft\u2019s arrival helps the spacecraft team better design their experiments when they get there. So it\u2019s very useful to know, for example, that these objects have atmospheres, and what those atmospheres are made of, because then the mission, you know, has the whole time that the spacecraft is flying out there to think about how they\u2019re going to capitalize on that information to learn more. The other angle of this is that these objects are constantly changing. This is especially true for something like Io that has active volcanoes. But we also see this in the gas that\u2019s surrounding moons like Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. So that the gas is kind of patchy, and it looks like it\u2019s kind of in a different place every time you see it. And spacecraft can only capture images at a kind of at very set times, and only for the duration of the mission. And often, you know, the spacecraft is only there during one season, for example, for the object, and so you need observations from Webb and other telescopes to really understand the context of what you\u2019re seeing and whether it reflects the moon\u2019s behavior all the time, or whether it\u2019s just a function of this particular season.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: This is going to sound a little corny, maybe, but, you know, I couldn\u2019t help thinking that the Galilean moons are named that because they were described by Galileo hundreds of years ago, and so they\u2019re like the original thing that we looked at through a telescope, right? \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: And now when you study them with something like the James Webb space telescope that is, you know, kind of in the same lineage, but, but so much more powerful, I don\u2019t know. Do you ever kind of think back on like that, that legacy of the many, many telescopes that have looked at these moons before, and how you\u2019re sort of building on everything that we\u2019ve learned along the way?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Yeah, absolutely, I would say that is certainly something that I think about, that we\u2019ve been looking at these objects for, for 400 years now, and it\u2019s just amazing to compare, you know, what Galileo learned about these moons compared to what we can see with telescopes today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Music: Secret Formula by Tim Harvest and Zach Rowan]\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: So, in addition to the moons of Jupiter, James Webb has made some pretty exciting observations on the moons of Saturn, and in particular Enceladus and Titan. And one of the things that\u2019s really cool about Enceladus is that it has these jets of water and other things coming out of its south pole. Those were discovered by the Cassini spacecraft, and the James Webb Space Telescope looked at Enceladus and its plumes. And I highly recommend that you look up the image because it\u2019s measuring specifically water vapor in the plumes, and you can see that the water vapor extends to just extends away from Enceladus to many, many times the size of Enceladus itself. \u00a0<\/p>\n
[SFX: Whooshing geyser]\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Imagine like if some supercharged version of Old Faithful on Earth, where you could measure the water out to, you know, the distance of many Earths out into space, right? It\u2019s like at that scale. And you know, we knew from Cassini that that water was coming out, but it hadn\u2019t been mapped out to those distances before the James Webb observations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: As we\u2019re you know, winding down our tour here of the solar system, are there any other stops we should make points of interest for you, or things that you\u2019ve just got your eye on?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: So, one of the things that Webb is particularly good at for the solar system is mapping where we see water and carbon dioxide. So those are central, what we call volatile compounds that are, you know, essential for habitability, but also just for the evolution of a planet, and those are the things that we really can\u2019t see from Earth, because Earth has water and carbon dioxide in its atmosphere and those are absorbing light, you know, at the wavelengths where we\u2019d be looking for it on other planets. So one of the big things that Webb has revealed is just the distribution of water and carbon dioxide across the solar system, and it has, in fact, discovered a carbon dioxide atmosphere at Ganymede, and has been able to map the carbon dioxide atmosphere at Callisto, which has been known from spacecraft but hasn\u2019t been mapped before, so we can actually see how those atmospheres are distributed across the moons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: I did a similar interview with an exoplanet scientist not long ago. And like, anytime he finds carbon dioxide, you know, out there on an exoplanet somewhere, he\u2019s so excited. I guess like, as you learn more about the solar system. Do you ever get with the exoplanet researchers and kind of swap notes and say, like, \u201cHey, this is what I\u2019m finding. Maybe this can help you? Is there anything out there that you see that maybe can help me studying our solar system?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Yeah, I think that people studying exoplanets look quite a bit at Solar System planets to kind of predict the type of signatures that they should see at exoplanets. You know, if they\u2019re looking for a exo-Uranus or an exo-Neptune, what would that look like? And they look to the solar system for that. I think conversely, you know, we only have our solar system. We only have this specific set of planets and moons. It\u2019s just one example of the many ways that things can be that a solar system could have, could have evolved into, and we don\u2019t really have the context. You know, for understanding, is our solar system unique or weird, or is it actually just normal? And the information that we get on exoplanets just allows us to really put into context our own host planet and informs how we think about the history of our solar system as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: By now, I think a lot of people have heard of the James Webb Space Telescope. A lot of us have seen the pretty pictures that come out of it. But at a high level, what do you want people to understand about the science that\u2019s coming out of this telescope?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Trying to understand what\u2019s happening in our universe, in our galaxy, or just in our solar system, requires all these different pieces of information that we get with different telescopes, and in particular because they see light at all these different wavelengths, radio telescopes, telescopes that operate at visible wavelengths and James Webb in the infrared, and that our picture of much of the universe, including our solar system, has been incomplete because we haven\u2019t had access to these infrared wavelengths, and it\u2019s kind of like adding one more perspective that just gives us a more complete and true picture of what the universe around us is doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: If, if we could, like, magically send you to one place in the Solar System safely and non-painfully and all that. And you know, you\u2019d be able to see it for yourself and do some kind of science yourself there. Where would you want to go?\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Ah, that is an easy question. I would go to Io. You can\u2019t do the same sort of study on Io that I\u2019m doing on the asteroids, because Io is so bright, it\u2019s putting out all of this heat from its volcanoes, and it\u2019s saturating the James Webb detectors at exactly the wavelengths that you would need to get the composition of its lava flows. \u00a0<\/p>\n
[Music: Yes You Could by Tim Harvest and Zach Rowan]\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: So, I would love to go there and take some samples of a whole lot of different lava flows, because we know from Earth that lava flows have a lot of variability and composition, and that tells you about the local geology, etc. And you know, I\u2019d bring a geochemistry lab out there with me and put it on Io\u2019s surface and hope it doesn\u2019t get covered in a lava flow. And then I would study what all these, all these materials are made of.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: You just bring a bag full of lava back to a lab here, I guess.\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Yeah, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s more feasible, bringing a lab there or bringing surface samples back here, but that\u2019s, that\u2019s where I would go and visit. It\u2019s just such a fun and exciting place too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: Well, Katherine, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATHERINE: Yeah, and thank you!\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: Katherine de Kleer is an assistant professor of planetary science and astronomy at Caltech.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you liked this episode \u2026 you will love NASA\u2019s documentary Cosmic Dawn, all about the James Webb Space Telescope.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll go behind the scenes with people who made the telescope possible \u2026 including John Mather. He\u2019s the Nobel Prize-winning NASA scientist who first proposed the Webb telescope.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JOHN MATHER:\u00a0 I knew when I got into the mission that it was going to be exciting. I said, \u201cThis is the coolest thing that I\u2019ve ever heard of. This is what I want to work on. And I do not care how hard it is or how long it\u2019s going to take. I just want to work on it and make it happen.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: You can learn more about John Mather \u2026 and experience the untold stories of the engineers, scientists and even truck drivers who brought the telescope to life \u2026 in the film Cosmic Dawn. Just go to NASA.gov\/cosmicdawn.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
And one more thing \u2026 NASA is tracking a comet called 3I\/ATLAS \u2026 which is an extremely rare opportunity to study an object that came from outside our solar system. Scientists are using Webb to learn more about it. You can find more information \u2026 and all the latest news from the James Webb Space Telescope \u2026 at nasa.gov\/webb.\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Theme music: Curiosity by SYSTEM Sounds]\u00a0<\/p>\n
JACOB: This is NASA\u2019s Curious Universe. This episode was written and produced by Christian Elliott. Our executive producer is Katie Konans. My co-host is Padi Boyd. Krystofer Kim designed our show art.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our theme song was composed by Matt Russo and Andrew Santaguida of SYSTEM Sounds.\u00a0Special thanks to the Academic Media Technologies team at Caltech.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
As always, if you enjoyed this episode of NASA\u2019s Curious Universe, please let us know. Leave us a review. Send a link to a friend. And remember, you can \u201cfollow\u201d NASA\u2019s Curious Universe in your favorite podcast app to get a notification each time we post a new episode.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
[NASA Audio stinger: 3, 2, 1\u2026 This is an official NASA podcast]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Episode description:\u00a0 NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope is hard at work answering our biggest questions about the birth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[3503,1813,4688,53518,68028,22680,17961,41483,51733,71450,28540,1815,22681,45494,71451,4689,71452,90,416,71453,3727,56,54,55,3728],"class_list":{"0":"post-156130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-asteroids","9":"tag-astronomy","10":"tag-audio","11":"tag-callisto","12":"tag-enceladus","13":"tag-europa","14":"tag-exoplanets","15":"tag-ganymede","16":"tag-gas-giants","17":"tag-io","18":"tag-james-webb-space-telescope-jwst","19":"tag-jupiter","20":"tag-jupiter-moons","21":"tag-moons","22":"tag-ocean-worlds","23":"tag-podcasts","24":"tag-saturn-moons","25":"tag-science","26":"tag-space","27":"tag-the-kuiper-belt","28":"tag-the-solar-system","29":"tag-uk","30":"tag-united-kingdom","31":"tag-unitedkingdom","32":"tag-uranus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}