---
title: "James Webb Targets Mars, Showing Catastrophic Ancient Damage"
description: "NASA pointed the incredibly powerful James Webb Space Telescope at Mars for the first time, getting a new look at some of the planet's oldest scars."
date: "2022-09-20"
modified: "2022-09-20"
authors:
  - name: "Frank Landymore"
    job_title: "Contributing Writer"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/james-webb-mars-hellas-basin"
categories:
  - "Astronomy"
  - "James Webb Space Telescope"
  - "Mars"
  - "NASA"
  - "Space"
tags:
  - "James webb"
  - "james webb space telescope"
  - "mars"
  - "the digest"
---

# James Webb Targets Mars, Showing Catastrophic Ancient Damage

![NASA pointed the incredibly powerful James Webb Space Telescope at Mars for the first time, getting a new look at some of the planet's oldest scars.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/james-webb-mars-damage.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: NASA\</em\>*

## Mars Scars

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured its [first images of Mars](<https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/09/19/mars-is-mighty-in-first-webb-observations-of-red-planet/>), providing crisp new observations of a damaged planet.

Using the scope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), astronomers got a new look at the Hellas Basin, believed to have formed some four billion years ago when an unknown object of gargantuan proportions smashed into Mars’ surface when the poor planet was still young. At 4,400 miles across, it shows up in NIRCam’s images as a massive dark-orange spot in the infrared spectrum, amidst the bright yellow of Mars’ subsolar point, the point where the sun is directly overhead.

What's notably strange is the Hellas Basin’s darkness, especially when you consider that the sun is beaming directly down on it — something that caught even NASA scientists off guard.

"We weren't expecting that," said lead investigator and Goddard Space Flight Center scientist Giuliano Liuzzi at a press conference, as [quoted by *Space.com*](<https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-first-images-mars>). "We were seeing something very bright, but it got darker."

## Damage Plan

The explanation, according to principal investigator Geronimo Villanueva also of Goddard, lies lies in the planet's atmosphere.

"The Hellas Basin is a lower altitude, and thus experiences higher air pressure," Villanueva explained in a NASA [statement](<https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/2022/09/19/mars-is-mighty-in-first-webb-observations-of-red-planet/>). "That higher pressure leads to a suppression of the thermal emission at this particular wavelength range due to an effect called pressure broadening. It will be very interesting to tease apart these competing effects in these data."

You’d think it’d be a no-brainer to point the groundbreaking space telescope, capable of capturing celestial bodies billions of lightyears away, at a planet in our own solar system.

But it’s trickier than it sounds. Because the James Webb is so powerful, something as close as Mars is astonishingly bright and overwhelming to its sensors.

To overcome that challenge, NASA astronomers used short exposures so that the images didn’t appear blown out, and used special techniques to analyze the resulting data.

Clearly, the scientist' finagling paid off — and we can't wait to see more.

**More on the James Webb:** *[Harvard and MIT Scientists Warn That James Webb Data May Not Be What It Seems](<https://futurism.com/harvard-mit-study-jwst-data>)*

## Author
At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled.

### Author social links  
[Bluesky](<https://bsky.app/profile/f-w-l.bsky.social>)