Ball Wet: Massive Asteroid Vesta Harbors Scant Frozen Water at Surface
Thursday, September 20, 2012 - 17:30
in Astronomy & Space
New evidence suggests that frozen water lurks in the dusty, pitted surface of our solar system's second most-massive asteroid. The discovery at Vesta is helping researchers understand how a once-molten protoplanet--a category that includes Earth's embryo--could gather water early in its history as it cooled and spun through space. Vesta's regolith, or rocky soil, is estimated to hold only 5 percent water by weight, however; hardly enough to get future astronauts wet or even offer them much of a drink. Space travelers would have better luck mining water on other, wetter asteroids. [More]