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Asteroid Benn Protection. | Credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona University
Scientists studying asteroid bennu samples found that it contains a great combination of substances – some of them formed for a long time before it even had the sun.
In conclusion, the conclusions described in recently published documents show how Bennu has retained clues on the earliest days of our solar system.
“It is very interesting to see that Bennu is a time capsule that was in the entire solar system, sure, in really early stages of our solar system,” said Pierre Haenecour, University of Arizona, Arizona University in Arizona, who analyzed the examples of Presolar Grains.
In samples 2020 In a short but dramatic Benn to touch Bennu, NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft, which contains dust that formed in our solar system, organic materials from interstellar space and stardust older than the sun was scanned.
Scientists say that these tiny grains could have traveled huge distances before becoming a part of Benn’s parents asteroid, a much larger body that had crashed in the asteroid strip between Mars and Jupiter millions of years ago.
“We see that Bennu’s example is this material that was essentially around the solar system,” Haenecour told Space.com. Some of these grains have experienced high heat and reactions with water, as well as “several generations of impact events”, including a catastrophic collision that divided his parents’ asteroid, he said.
One of the studies published in Nature Astronomy shows that the ice in the asteroide of the parents has melted and reacted with dust, forming minerals, which now accounts for about 80% of Benn. Certain grains, such as silicon carbide, have unique chemical signatures that reveal stars – stars that no longer exist.
“They have long been gone,” Haenecour told Space.com. “We would not be able to observe the stars from which specific grains came from.”
These presolular grains are incredibly small, often smaller than the micrometer and recognize them with unusual chemical fingerprints left by nuclear reactions in their main stars. Their map is like finding a “needle haystack”, but it allows scientists to trace the origin of the ancient Bennu material, Haenecour said.
The image of an electron microscope of the micrometeorite shot crater on the asteroid Bennu material particle. New studies have been reported by asteroid examples, there is a great combination of substances, some older than the sun. | Credit: NASA/ZIA Rahman
Another study published in Nature Geoscience emphasizes how weather conditions formed Benn without air, including a small micrometeorite effect and solar wind. The top layer of Bennu has been exposed to cosmic rays between 2 and 7 million years, reports in the study. Based on paper, these processes have developed microscopic craters and splashes of molten rocks on the asteroid surface.
Comparison with asteroid Ryugu examples selected by the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission shows that the effect can play a greater role in changing the surface of asteroids than previously thought, scientists say.
“Surface weather conditions go much faster than the usual wisdom,” said NASA’s Johnson Space Center Houston scientist Lindsay Keller, the report said.
“Space weather conditions are an important process that affects all asteroids, and with the examples returned, we can annoy the control of it and use that data and extrapolation to explain the surface and development of the asteroid bodies we have not visited,” Keller added.
Because many asteroids burn in the Earth’s atmosphere, the collection of samples directly from space is necessary to put them in their history. Meteorites that fall to Earth can present hints of asteroid orbit, but they rarely reveal its entire history, Haenecour said.
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Osiris-Rex has been investigating Benn for more than a year, carefully depicting its surfaces and analyzing the minerals that presented a “very valuable geological context that we cannot get from meteorites,” Haenecour noted.
“We were only able to get the answers we received for examples,” Jessica Barnes from Arizona’s University added in a statement that led one of the new documents.
“It is very interesting that we can finally see these things about an asteroid we have dreamed of so long.”