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Explore This Section Webb News Latest News Latest Images Blog (offsite) 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 6 Min Read NASA Webb’s Autopsy of Planet Swallowed by Star Yields Surprise
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of what is thought to be the first-ever recorded planetary engulfment event revealed a hot accretion disk surrounding the star, with an expanding cloud of cooler dust enveloping the scene. Webb also revealed that the star did not swell to swallow the planet, but the planet’s orbit actually slowly depreciated over time, as seen in this artist’s concept. Full illustration below. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, R. Crawford (STScI) Observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have provided a surprising twist in the narrative surrounding what is believed to be the first star observed in the act of swallowing a planet. The new findings suggest that the star actually did not swell to envelop a planet as previously hypothesized. Instead, Webb’s observations show the planet’s orbit shrank over time, slowly bringing the planet closer to its demise until it was engulfed in full.
“Because this is such a novel event, we didn’t quite know what to expect when we decided to point this telescope in its direction,” said Ryan Lau, lead author of the new paper and astronomer at NSF NOIRLab (National Science Foundation National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory) in Tuscon, Arizona. “With its high-resolution look in the infrared, we are learning valuable insights about the final fates of planetary systems, possibly including our own.”
Two instruments aboard Webb conducted the post-mortem of the scene – Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph). The researchers were able to come to their conclusion using a two-pronged investigative approach.
Image A: Planetary Engulfment Illustration
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observations of what is thought to be the first-ever recorded planetary engulfment event revealed a hot accretion disk surrounding the star, with an expanding cloud of cooler dust enveloping the scene. Webb also revealed that the star did not swell to swallow the planet, but the planet’s orbit actually slowly depreciated over time, as seen in this artist’s concept. NASA, ESA, CSA, R. Crawford (STScI) Constraining the How
The star at the center of this scene is located in the Milky Way galaxy about 12,000 light-years away from Earth.
The brightening event, formally called ZTF SLRN-2020, was originally spotted as a flash of optical light using the Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego, California. Data from NASA’s NEOWISE (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) showed the star actually brightened in the infrared a year before the optical light flash, hinting at the presence of dust. This initial 2023 investigation led researchers to believe that the star was more Sun-like, and had been in the process of aging into a red giant over hundreds of thousands of years, slowly expanding as it exhausted its hydrogen fuel.
However, Webb’s MIRI told a different story. With powerful sensitivity and spatial resolution, Webb was able to precisely measure the hidden emission from the star and its immediate surroundings, which lie in a very crowded region of space. The researchers found the star was not as bright as it should have been if it had evolved into a red giant, indicating there was no swelling to engulf the planet as once thought.
Reconstructing the Scene
Researchers suggest that, at one point, the planet was about Jupiter-sized, but orbited quite close to the star, even closer than Mercury’s orbit around our Sun. Over millions of years, the planet orbited closer and closer to the star, leading to the catastrophic consequence.
“The planet eventually started to graze the star’s atmosphere. Then it was a runaway process of falling in faster from that moment,” said team member Morgan MacLeod of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “The planet, as it’s falling in, started to sort of smear around the star.”
In its final splashdown, the planet would have blasted gas away from the outer layers of the star. As it expanded and cooled off, the heavy elements in this gas condensed into cold dust over the next year.
Inspecting the Leftovers
While the researchers did expect an expanding cloud of cooler dust around the star, a look with the powerful NIRSpec revealed a hot circumstellar disk of molecular gas closer in. Furthermore, Webb’s high spectral resolution was able to detect certain molecules in this accretion disk, including carbon monoxide.
“With such a transformative telescope like Webb, it was hard for me to have any expectations of what we’d find in the immediate surroundings of the star,” said Colette Salyk of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, an exoplanet researcher and co-author on the new paper. “I will say, I could not have expected seeing what has the characteristics of a planet-forming region, even though planets are not forming here, in the aftermath of an engulfment.”
The ability to characterize this gas opens more questions for researchers about what actually happened once the planet was fully swallowed by the star.
“This is truly the precipice of studying these events. This is the only one we’ve observed in action, and this is the best detection of the aftermath after things have settled back down,” Lau said. “We hope this is just the start of our sample.”
These observations, taken under Guaranteed Time Observation program 1240, which was specifically designed to investigate a family of mysterious, sudden, infrared brightening events, were among the first Target of Opportunity programs performed by Webb. These types of study are reserved for events, like supernova explosions, that are expected to occur, but researchers don’t exactly know when or where. NASA’s space telescopes are part of a growing, international network that stands ready to witness these fleeting changes, to help us understand how the universe works.
Researchers expect to add to their sample and identify future events like this using the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory and NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which will survey large areas of the sky repeatedly to look for changes over time.
The team’s findings appear today 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).
To learn more about Webb, visit: https://science.nasa.gov/webb
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NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Hannah Braun – hbraun@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated Apr 10, 2025 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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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 3 min read
Sols 4498-4499: Flexing Our Arm Once Again
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity acquired this image using its Left Navigation Camera on March 30, 2025 — Sol 4496, or Martian day 4,496 of the Mars Science Laboratory mission — at 20:12:48 UTC. NASA/JPL-Caltech Written by Conor Hayes, Graduate Student at York University
Earth planning date: Monday, March 31, 2025
Planning today began with two pieces of great news. First, our 50-meter drive (about 164 feet) from the weekend plan completed successfully, bringing us oh-so-close to finally driving out of the small canyon that we’ve been traversing through and toward the “boxwork” structures to our southwest. Second, we passed our “Slip Risk Assessment Process” (SRAP), confirming that all six of Curiosity’s wheels are parked firmly on solid ground. Avid readers of this blog will be familiar with last week’s SRAP challenges, which prevented us from using the rover’s arm for the entire week. With a green light on SRAP, we were finally able to put our suite of contact science instruments back to work today.
The arm gets to work early on the first sol of this plan, with an APXS integration on “Los Osos,” a bedrock target in our workspace, after it has been cleared of the ubiquitous Martian dust by DRT. The rest of our arm activities consist of a series of MAHLI observations later in the afternoon, both of Los Osos and “Black Star Canyon.”
Of course, just because we managed to get contact science in this plan doesn’t mean we’re letting our remote sensing instruments take a break. In fact, we have more than two hours of remote sensing, split between the two sols and the two science teams (Geology and Mineralogy [GEO] and Atmosphere and Environment [ENV]). GEO will be using Mastcam to survey both the highs and the lows of the terrain, with mosaics of “Devil’s Gate” (some stratigraphy in a nearby ledge) and some small troughs close to the rover. We’ll also be getting even more Mastcam images of “Gould Mesa,” an imaging target in many previous plans, as we continue to drive past it. ChemCam gets involved with a LIBS observation of “Fishbowls,” which will also be imaged by Mastcam, a post-drive AEGIS, and two RMI mosaics of Gould Mesa and “Torote Bowl,” which was also imaged over the weekend.
ENV’s activities are fairly typical for this time of year as Curiosity monitors the development of the Aphelion Cloud Belt (ACB) with several Navcam cloud movies, as well as seasonal changes in the amount of dust in and above Gale with Navcam line-of-sight observations and Mastcam taus. We’ll also be taking a Navcam dust devil movie to see if we can catch any cold-weather wind-driven dust movement. ENV also filled this plan with their usual set of REMS, RAD, and DAN observations.
The drive planned today is significantly shorter than the one over the weekend, at just about 10 meters (about 33 feet). This is because we’re driving up a small ridge, which limits our ability to see what’s on the other side. Although our rover knows how to keep itself safe, we still prefer not to drive through terrain that we can’t see in advance, if it can be avoided. Once we’ve got a better eye on what lies in front of us, we will hopefully be able to continue our speedy trek toward the boxwork structures.
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Last Updated Apr 03, 2025 Related Terms
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
A Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory pilot controls a drone during NASA’s In-Time Aviation Safety Management System test series in collaboration with a George Washington University team July 17-18, 2024, at the U.S. Army’s Fort Devens in Devens, Massachusetts. MIT Lincoln Laboratory/Jay Couturier From agriculture and law enforcement to entertainment and disaster response, industries are increasingly turning to drones for help, but the growing volume of these aircraft will require trusted safety management systems to maintain safe operations.
NASA is testing a new software system to create an improved warning system – one that can predict hazards to drones before they occur. The In-Time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) will monitor, assess, and mitigate airborne risks in real time. But making sure that it can do all that requires extensive experimentation to see how its elements work together, including simulations and drone flight tests.
“If everything is going as planned with your flight, you won’t notice your in-time aviation safety management system working,” said Michael Vincent, NASA acting deputy project manager with the System-Wide Safety project at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. “It’s before you encounter an unusual situation, like loss of navigation or communications, that the IASMS provides an alert to the drone operator.”
The team completed a simulation in the Human-Autonomy Teaming Laboratory at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley on March 5 aimed at finding out how critical elements of the IASMS could be used in operational hurricane relief and recovery.
During this simulation, 12 drone pilots completed three 30-minute sessions where they managed up to six drones flying beyond visual line of sight to perform supply drops to residents stranded after a severe hurricane. Additional drones flew scripted search and rescue operations and levee inspections in the background. Researchers collected data on pilot performance, mission success, workload, and perceptions of the experiences, as well as the system’s usability.
This simulation is part of a longer-term strategy by NASA to advance this technology. The lessons learned from this study will help prepare for the project’s hurricane relief and recovery flight tests, planned for 2027.
As an example of this work, in the summer of 2024 NASA tested its IASMS during a series of drone flights in collaboration with the Ohio Department of Transportation in Columbus, Ohio, and in a separate effort, with three university-led teams.
For the Ohio Department of Transportation tests, a drone flew with the NASA-developed IASMS software aboard, which communicated back to computers at NASA Langley. Those transmissions gave NASA researchers input on the system’s performance.
Students from the Ohio State University participate in drone flights during NASA’s In-Time Aviation Safety Management System test series in collaboration with the Ohio Department of Transportation from March to July 2024 at the Columbus Aero Club in Ohio. NASA/Russell Gilabert NASA also conducted studies with The George Washington University (GWU), the University of Notre Dame, and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). These occurred at the U.S. Army’s Fort Devens in Devens, Massachusetts with GWU; near South Bend, Indiana with Notre Dame; and in Richmond, Virginia with VCU. Each test included a variety of types of drones, flight scenarios, and operators.
Students from Virginia Commonwealth University walk toward a drone after a flight as part of NASA’s In-Time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) test series July 16, 2024, in Richmond, Virginia. NASA/Dave Bowman Each drone testing series involved a different mission for the drone to perform and different hazards for the system to avoid. Scenarios included, for example, how the drone would fly during a wildfire or how it would deliver a package in a city. A different version of the NASA IASMS was used to fit the scenario depending on the mission, or depending on the flight area.
Students from the University of Notre Dame prepare a small drone for takeoff as part of NASA’s In-Time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) university test series, which occurred on August 21, 2024 in Notre Dame, Indiana.University of Notre Dame/Wes Evard When used in conjunction with other systems such as NASA’s Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management, IASMS may allow for routine drone flights in the U.S. to become a reality. The IASMS adds an additional layer of safety for drones, assuring the reliability and trust if the drone is flying over a town on a routine basis that it remains on course while avoiding hazards along the way.
“There are multiple entities who contribute to safety assurance when flying a drone,” Vincent said. “There is the person who’s flying the drone, the company who designs and manufactures the drone, the company operating the drone, and the Federal Aviation Administration, who has oversight over the entire National Airspace System. Being able to monitor, assess and mitigate risks in real time would make the risks in these situations much more secure.”
All of this work is led by NASA’s System-Wide Safety project under the Airspace Operations and Safety program in support of the agency’s Advanced Air Mobility mission, which seeks to deliver data to guide the industry’s development of electric air taxis and drones.
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Last Updated Apr 02, 2025 EditorDede DiniusContactTeresa Whitingteresa.whiting@nasa.gov Related Terms
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In about 5 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel and expand, possibly engulfing Earth. These end stages of a star’s life can be utterly beautiful – as is the case with this planetary nebula called the Helix Nebula. Astronomers study these objects by looking at all kinds of light.X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand This image of the Helix Nebula, released on March 4, 2025, shows a potentially destructive white dwarf at the nebula’s center: this star may have destroyed a planet. This has never been seen before – and could explain a mysterious X-ray signal that astronomers have detected from the nebula for over 40 years.
This view combines X-rays from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (magenta), optical light data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope (orange, light blue), infrared data from the European Southern Observatory VISTA telescope (gold, dark blue), and ultraviolet data from GALEX (purple) of the Helix Nebula. Data from Chandra indicates that this white dwarf has destroyed a very closely orbiting planet.
Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Univ Mexico/S. Estrada-Dorado et al.; Ultraviolet: NASA/JPL; Optical: NASA/ESA/STScI (M. Meixner)/NRAO (T.A. Rector); Infrared: ESO/VISTA/J. Emerson; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/K. Arcand
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