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NASA Finds Evidence of Water on Asteroid Bennu

posted by martyb on Tuesday December 11 2018, @05:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the water+solar+electrolysis=rocket-fuel-and-oxidizer dept.

takyon writes:

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".

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  • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Tuesday December 11 2018, @08:55PM

    by Sulla (5173) on Tuesday December 11 2018, @08:55PM (#773074) Journal

    And Mars
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_on_Mars [wikipedia.org]

    Almost all water on Mars today exists as ice, though it also exists in small quantities as vapor in the atmosphere,[4] and occasionally as low-volume liquid brines in shallow Martian soil.

    And Europa
    https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-hubble-spots-possible-water-plumes-erupting-on-jupiters-moon-europa [nasa.gov]

    Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have imaged what may be water vapor plumes erupting off the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. This finding bolsters other Hubble observations suggesting the icy moon erupts with high altitude water vapor plumes.

    Not to say this isn't cool as well, but there appears to be a lot more places out there with liquid water than we originally thought.

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam