A new study ensures that there is no water on board one of the most famous celestial bodies in recent years.
On more than one occasion we have talked about how comets and asteroids could be carriers of the life that we know on Earth and sometimes it has been theorized with which these too they could have transported the water that we find on our planet. In this case, according to research published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, this speculation seems to have been put to rest at a stroke.
Our Solar System has witnessed a NASA mission that sought to alter the trajectory of a asteroid and along the way we learned further about his nature.
Dimorphos does not have any presence of water
It is not the first time that water has been sought on an asteroidalready happened in the year 2009 with the so-called (24) Themis, finding the precious element on its surface thanks to the work of the NASA Infrared Telescope located in Hawaii. And it is that some theories suggest that certain asteroids could harbor a layer of ice under their surface, coming from their passage through places in the cosmos far from the Sun. In this case, to fetch water in Dimorphosthe MUSE instrument, created by the European Southern Observatory and located at Chili.
☄️ In case you missed it yesterday (or just want to relive it): These are the last moments of the spaceship #DART on its collision course with the asteroid Dimorphos, which does not represent a danger to Earth: pic.twitter.com/lZZfFKRdNe
— NASA in Spanish (@NASA_es) September 27, 2022
The search for water in Dimorphosas well as in the system that also includes Didymos, the asteroid it accompanies, has been taking place for years. Before the impact of the DART shipwere a total of 11 observations those that were made of said system and these they were repeated up to a month later. He MUSE instrumentin this case, is able to split light in a wide spectrum of colors and look up wavelengths specific.
What would have been sought in this investigation is find the exact length of water and oxygen molecules, from the moment the impact occurred and the remains of the asteroid were ejected. However, it was not possible to verify that there was water present on the asteroid through this method, with what appears to be Dimorphos is a desert sailing through the cosmos Cyrielle Opitom, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, has stated in the digital medium Space that:
DART was a unique opportunity, because we knew precisely the time of impact, as well as the mass and properties of the impactor. We have incredible images of the surface, and the aftermath of the impact has also been observed with a variety of instruments. Combining all this information we will be able to build a detailed picture of what happened and this will help us interpret observations of impacts on other asteroids.
Founder Dwight D Eisenhower Foundation date 07-29-1958 Alternative name National Aeronautics and Space Administration Number of employees 18000