As the Webb Space Telescope continues gearing up for its first observations, researchers are getting excited about the technology’s capacity to have a look at interstellar objects that go by our photo voltaic system.

The $10 billion spacecraft is an infrared telescope charged with finding out each part of cosmic historical past. Webb will observe galactic evolution, stellar nurseries, and exoplanets, and it will have the ability to see again in time over 13.5 billion years, almost to the start of the universe. But it may also have a look at close by objects, together with something that abruptly seems in our neighborhood from afar.

“With Webb, we can do really interesting science at much fainter magnitudes or brightnesses,” stated Cristina Thomas, a planetary scientist at Northern Arizona University, in a NASA release. “We’ve never been able to observe interstellar objects in this region of the infrared. It opens a lot of opportunities for the different compositional signatures that we’re interested in.”

Two such interlopers have already be noticed by people: An object in 2017, named ‘Oumuamua, and Borisov in 2019. Borisov was a rogue comet estimated to be about 3,200 feet across that hurtled through at about 110,000 miles per hour. ‘Oumuamua caused a bit more controversy; its exotic cigar shape raised some eyebrows, with some even suggesting it was an alien spacecraft. Perhaps a more likely conclusion was proffered by researchers in the Journal of Geophysical Research last year: that it was a piece of an exoplanet ejected from a distant star system nearly half a billion years ago.

But Borisov and ‘Oumuamua came and went, which is why researchers at NASA are excited for how Webb will handle future solar system visitors.

“The supreme sensitivity and power of Webb now present us with an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the chemical composition of these interstellar objects and find out so much more about their nature: where they come from, how they were made, and what they can tell us about the conditions present in their home systems,” said Martin Cordiner, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, within the launch.

Should one other interstellar traveler seem, researchers might use Webb’s spectroscopic instruments to check the chemistry of any gases or mud it sheds. Knowing the chemical make-up of an object can reveal what it’s and what situations have been like in its dwelling system.

Such observations require an interstellar object, although. Perhaps we must be grateful one isn’t at present making its transit, as Webb nonetheless has a number of extra months of prep work forward. This month, the telescope is aligning its mirrors, and it just lately noticed its first photons of sunshine. NASA expects the telescope to be capturing pictures by June.

More: Interstellar Visitor ‘Oumuamua Could Be the Shattered Remnant of a Pluto-like Object