JWST/NIRSpec Observations of Salacia-Actaea and Máni: Exploring Population-level Trends among Water-ice-rich Kuiper Belt Objects

Abstract We present observations of the midsized Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) Salacia–Actaea and Máni, obtained with the Near-Infrared Spectrograph on JWST. The satellite Actaea was fully blended with Salacia at the spatial resolution of the integral field unit, and we extracted the combined spectrum. The 0.7–5.1 μ m reflectance spectra of Salacia–Actaea and Máni display prominent water-ice absorption bands at 1.5, 2, 3, and 4–5 μ m. The ν 3 fundamental vibrational band of carbon dioxide ice at 4.25 μ m is present in both spectra. From a quantitative band-depth analysis of the entire current JWST spectroscopic sample of water-ice-rich KBOs, we find strong evidence for a positive covariance between relative water-ice abundance and size, which may indicate the emergent impacts of internal differentiation and cryovolcanic production of surface water ice on midsized KBOs. A detailed look at the distribution of 2 and 3 μ m band depths suggests additional sources of variability, such as different water-ice grain sizes. In addition, we report an apparent transition in the carbon dioxide band depth at object diameters of roughly 300–500 km, with larger objects showing systematically weaker absorptions, although selection effects within the sample do not allow us to confidently distinguish between a size-dependent phenomenon and a correlation with dynamical class.