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NASA Finds Evidence of Water on Asteroid Bennu

Accepted submission by takyon at 2018-12-11 13:22:01
Techonomics

The OSIRIS-REx [wikipedia.org] spacecraft, which "arrived" [soylentnews.org] at the asteroid Bennu [wikipedia.org] on December 3 but has been slowly approaching it for weeks, has found evidence [sciencealert.com] of Bennu's interaction with liquid water in the past:

In a conference [projectionnet.com] 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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