Ice found on Asteroid

by Admin - Icemaidan on Thu Nov 18, 2010 10:35 am

Very interesting.....

Scientists have found lots of life-essential water — frozen as ice — in an unexpected place in our solar system: an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.

The discovery of significant asteroid ice has several consequences. It could help explain where early Earth first got its water. It makes asteroids more attractive to explore.

This asteroid has an extensive but thin frosty coating. It is likely replenished by an extensive reservoir of frozen water deep inside rock once thought to be dry and desolate, scientists report in two studies.

Two teams of scientists used a NASA telescope in Hawaii to look at an asteroid called 24 Themis, one of the bigger rocks in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. They examined light waves bouncing off the rock and found the distinct chemical signature of ice.

Astronomers have long theorized that hydrogen and oxygen and bits of water locked in clay are in asteroids, but this is the first solid evidence. And what they found on 24 Themis, a rock more than 100 miles wide (198 kilometers wide) with temperatures around 100 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-73 degrees Celsius), was more than they ever expected. About a third of the rock seemed to be covered in frost.

Furthermore, scientists didn't just find ice; they found organic molecules, similar to what may have started life on Earth, Campins said.

"This asteroid holds clues to our past and how the solar system and water on Earth may have originated, and it also has clues to our future with exploration of near-Earth asteroids," Campins told The Associated Press.