Vestas rocky history (Nanowerk News) Rocks are silent storytellers: because each mineral is created only under certain conditions, they provide insight into the evolution of the body on which they are found. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany have now begun to elicit such a story from the enigmatic dark material discovered on the protoplanet Vesta. Using data from the framing camera aboard NASAs Dawn spacecraft, the researchers have succeeded for the first time in identifying a mineral component of this material: serpentine (Detection of Serpentine in Exogenic Carbonaceous Chondrite Material on Vesta from Dawn FC Data). The new discovery puts an end to the discussion about the origin of the dark material: impacts of primitive asteroids must have distributed it on Vesta.Numisia I: The Numisia crater immediately south of the equator measures 30 kilometres in diameter. Images taken by the camera system on board NASA’s Dawn space probe using a clear filter show dark material on the crater walls, as well as in the material that was ejected on impact. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)The so-called dark material that can be found scattered over the surface of the protoplanet Vesta is one of its most unusual features. Ever since Dawn’s arrival in July 2011, this material, that absorbs light as efficiently as soot, has sparked discussions within the scientific community. What compounds is it made of? How did it originate? And what does it tell us about this unique body that took the first steps towards becoming a planet, but got stuck in an early evolutionary phase approximately 4.5 billion years ago? Read more from our site: goo.gl/VmUYy9 Visit our page: https://facebook/space.news.tech
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 15:18:11 +0000
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