NASA Telescope Detects Water Vapor Around Young Star, Shedding Light on Planet Formation

James Webb Space Telescope detected water vapor in the inner disk around the young star PDS 70, where planets are forming.
The water's presence hints that rocky, Earth-like planets in PDS 70's system could possess substantial water from early on.
Finding water vapor challenges ideas that radiation from new stars destroys water in planet-forming disks.
PDS 70 is 370 light-years from Earth and has similarities to our sun in mass and age.
The discovery provides information about how our own solar system's planets likely accumulated water and became habitable.