"WASP-39b shows exoplanets can have much different compositions than those of our solar system," David Sing of the University of Exeter, a co-author of the new study, said in a statement. "Hopefully this diversity we see in exoplanets will give us clues in figuring out all the different ways a planet can form and evolve," Sing said. Much like detectives who study fingerprints to identify the culprit, scientists used NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to find the "fingerprints" of water in the atmosphere of a hot, bloated, Saturn-mass exoplanet some 700 light-years away. What their spectrographic study found is that the planet, known as WASP-39b, has a ton of water in its atmosphere—three times the amount that Saturn has. As it turned out, the planet has three times as much water as Saturn, which could provide groundbreaking insights into how and where planets form around a star, according to researchers. Webb's observations will let researchers refine the measurements of heavy water at Mars and see how much water moves in the Martian water cycle between the atmosphere, the soil (regolith) and the polar ice. The amount of water suggests that WASP-39b has a unique evolutionary history and likely developed far away from its star, where it was “bombarded by a lot of icy material" throughout its epic journey across its planetary system. The analysis of the atmospheric composition and the current position of the planet indicate that WASP-39b most likely underwent an interesting inward migration, making an epic journey across its planetary system. NASA’s $1bn mobile launch tower may work only once

"We need to look outward so we can understand our own solar system,"explained lead investigator Hannah Wakeford of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and the University of Exeter in Devon, United Kingdom. "Exoplanets are showing us that planet formation is more complicated and more confusing than we thought it was," Wakeford added. And that’s fantastic!”, adds Wakeford. While scientists have previously drawn parallels between the two planets due to their similar masses, the extreme difference in water content suggests WASP-39b formed in a different way than our ringed neighbour. Using NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, the astronomers analysed the atmosphere of the "hot Saturn" exoplanet and they captured the most complete spectrum of an exoplanet's atmosphere possible with present-day technology. Located in the constellation Virgo, WASP-39b whips around a quiet, Sun-like star, called WASP-39, once every four days. Having made its incredible inward journey WASP-39b is now eight times closer to its parent star, WASP-39, than Mercury is to the Sun and it takes only four days to complete an orbit. The alien world is also tidally locked, which means that it shows only one side to its star. That means there are extreme temperatures on WASP-39b, as high as 1,430 degrees Fahrenheit on the star-facing side. Although only one side of the planet faces its parent star, powerful winds transport heat from the bright side around the planet, keeping the dark side almost as hot. And that’s fantastic.’

Though WASP-39b is compared to Saturn, the two planets are very different in a number of ways – the most obvious being that WASP-39b does not have rings. Using the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, the researchers say they could soon obtain an even more detailed look at the exoplanet’s atmosphere, revealing insight on its atmospheric carbon. Wakeford is gearing up for the next NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched in 2019, - to get an even more complete spectrum of the exoplanet, including the planet's atmospheric carbon, which absorbs light at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble can see. Wakeford concludes: “By calculating the amount of carbon and oxygen in the atmosphere, we can learn even more about where and how this planet formed.”
NASA astronomers use the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes in research implying that "hot Saturn" (high surface-atmosphere temperatures and gas giant-mass) exoplanet WASP-39b, located 700 light-years from Earth, has a large amount of water molecules in its atmosphere.