NASA hopes James Webb Space Telescope will unlock secrets of ‘super-Earths’ and hot rocky worlds

Some of the first James Webb Space Telescope investigations will focus on a variety of planet very different from what’s found in our cosmic neighborhood.

Once Webb finishes its six-month commissioning period around June, it is scheduled to start a series of studies in exoplanets. One such project will study 11 “super-Earths,” which are worlds between the sizes of Earth and Neptune. There are no such planets in our solar system.