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from the water+solar+electrolysis=rocket-fuel-and-oxidizer dept.
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, which "arrived" at the asteroid Bennu on December 3 but has been slowly approaching it for weeks, has found evidence of Bennu's interaction with liquid water in the past:
In a conference today, scientists announced that OSIRIS-REx has found evidence of hydrated minerals on the surface of Bennu using its on-board spectrometers - tools used to determine the exact chemical composition of a specific spot.
That means "evidence of liquid water" in Bennu's past, according to Amy Simon, the scientist overseeing OSIRIS-REx's spectral analysis.
"To get hydrated minerals in the first place, to get clays, you have to have water interacting with regular minerals," says Simon. "This is a great surprise."
And they're abundant, too. There's "strong convincing, evidence that the surface is dominated by these hydrated minerals," according to Dante Lauretta, leader of OSIRIS-REx's sample return mission, leading the team to believe Bennu is "water rich".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 12 2018, @04:31PM
The government forces people to fund scientists with competing ideas.
After 100s of billions of dollars, it would be unconscionable to have to admit that the universe is not, in fact, filled with dark matter liquid.