Volatile elements, like C, H, O, N, and S, are critical to the detectability of planetary atmospheres and the origins of life as we know it. These elements are mostly carried by icy dust grains that may have been transferred to Earth from the cold outer regions of the Solar protoplanetary disk. Much of this ice likely originated in the Sun's natal molecular cloud\; however, the total amount, variety, and complexity of ices inherited this way is an open question. These questions are critical to understanding planetary habitability and the rise of life, and they could allow us to use the atmospheric composition of giant planets to trace their formation zones in protoplanetary disks.

Infrared spectroscopy of clouds, protostars, and protoplanetary disks with JWST allows us to answer these questions. I will present initial results from several Cycle 1 JWST programs, including the ERS program Ice Age (http://jwst-iceage.org/), showcasing the exquisite data quality from JWST. These observations reveal the diversity of icy chemistry found in dark regions of molecular clouds and the distribution and bulk composition of ice and gas in protostars and disks. We see early chemical pathways to complex ices and CO2 in the cloud while the distribution of CO ice in the protoplanetary disk, suggests that it is trapped in the CO2 ice matrix on the dust grains. 

These results provide additional complications in the community's efforts to connect exoplanets' atmospheric compositions with their formation histories.