If anyone remembers, earlier, it was reported that NASA had started a mission to explore an asteroid. “16 Vichy (16 Vichy)” which lies between Mars and Jupiter
16 Cyde is a potato-shaped asteroid. It is 280 kilometers wide, and because it was detected to be luminescent it is believed to be full of metals, including gold, nickel and iron, which together could be worth over $10 trillion! It is considered a gold mine in the middle of space.
The hypothesis of the asteroid's precious metal composition prompted NASA to continue its Psyche exploration mission. The Psyche spacecraft was launched in October 2023 and is expected to arrive at the asteroid in 2029 for a detailed study.
But scientists recently used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to determine the composition of water on the asteroid 16 Psyche and found some traces of moisture in the form of “rust.”
Not all that glitters is gold, because of new information about Psyche's density and reflectance spectra, the intensity of different wavelengths reflected from the asteroid's surface. This suggests that it is likely an asteroid with a mixture of silicates and metals.
In 2017, researchers discovered intriguing traces of another element, water. Infrared spectra showed traces of hydroxyl, or OH, molecules that make up water.
These results suggest that the surface of the psyche may contain a small amount of water. Whether that is in the form of ice or hydrated minerals. But the results are still unclear. This is due to spectra collected using NASA's ground-based infrared telescope in Hawaii. It may have been damaged by water in Earth's atmosphere, and the researchers also found no more obvious traces of water at slightly higher infrared wavelengths.
Stephanie Jarmack is a planetary scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. One of the researchers said the traces helped other astronomers discover the ubiquitous water molecule on the moon. But it hadn’t been used on asteroids yet.
To find out whether Psyche actually contains water, Jarmak and scientists from institutions in the United States and Germany turned to Webb's infrared detectors, the Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
Scientists have compiled a snapshot of the spectrum reflected from Psyche's north pole.
Data from NIRSpec show traces of hydroxyl. This confirms the actual presence of hydroxyl on the asteroid.
Jarmack also noted that the high quality of the data allows comparison with hydroxyl traces from other meteorites. This reveals that the hydroxyl traces on the psyche are similar to those on some meteorites, which are rusty and rich in carbon.
This discovery led researchers to conclude that hydroxyl binds to the metal on the breath, causing it to rust.
But MIRI data did not reveal any obvious traces of water, but the researchers cannot rule out its presence. Since water may exist in other parts of the psyche that are not visible to the James Webb Space Telescope, there is also a possibility that water is present, but at concentrations below MIRI's detection limit.
In addition to the rust, the hydroxyl group on Psyche also provides clues about the asteroid's composition. If the hydroxyl formed inside the asteroid, it could indicate that Psyche was born in the cold outer solar system. It takes millions of years to orbit the inner solar system.
But available evidence suggests that an asteroid containing water may have collided with Psyche, giving Psyche an alien appearance and bringing hydroxyl with it.
Future plans include studying exactly where the hydrated mineral is located on Psyche's surface, Jarmack said, adding that these plans include monitoring Psyche's south pole, which contains large craters that may have been created by impacts with hydrated minerals.
Metal-rich asteroids are a lucrative source of rare earth minerals. They are the subject of future space mining operations, however, even with this assessment, the soul was not one of them. Because it is three times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Therefore, it is too far away and it is not cost-effective to invest in traveling to mine the minerals there.
Read the full research here
Compiled from Life Sciences