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Water is essential for life as we know and it seems to be abundant in many places outside of our planet. Researchers have now, for the first time, detected the presence of water molecules on the surface of an asteroid.
“Asteroids are leftovers from the planetary formation process, so their compositions vary depending on where they formed in the solar nebula. Of particular interest is the distribution of water on asteroids, because that can shed light on how water was delivered to Earth,” said Anicia Arredondo, lead author of a Planetary Science Journal paper about the discovery, in a press statement.
Dry or silicate asteroids form closer to the Sun while the icy material comes together to form asteroids much further out, according to the Southwest Research Insitute. Looking at the location of asteroids and compositions in our solar system tells us how the solar nebula that created it was distributed. If we understand the distribution of water in our solar system, it could help us understand distributions in other star systems, helping our search for extraterrestrial life.
“We detected a feature that is unambiguously attributed to molecular water on the asteroids Iris and Massalia, We based our research on the success of the team that found molecular water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. We thought we could use SOFIA to find this spectral signature on other bodies,” added Arredondo.
The retired Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) has previously detected water in the largest craters on the Moon’s southern hemisphere. It was able to detect some form of hydrogen in both the Moon and some asteroids but was unable to distinguish between water and hydroxyl, a close chemical relative.
“Based on the band strength of the spectral features, the abundance of water on the asteroid is consistent with that of the sunlit Moon. Similarly, on asteroids, water can also be bound to minerals as well as adsorbed to silicate and trapped or dissolved in silicate impact glass,” explained Arredondo.
