Curtin University | 2020 Feb 26
Planetary scientists at Curtin University have shed some light on the tumultuous early days of the largely preserved protoplanet Asteroid 4 Vesta, the second largest asteroid in our Solar System.
Research lead Professor Fred Jourdan, from Curtin University’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said Vesta is of tremendous interest to scientists trying to understand more about what planets are made of, and how they evolved.
“Vesta is the only largely intact asteroid which shows complete differentiation with a metallic core, a silicate mantle and a thin basaltic crust, and it’s also very small, with a diameter of only about 525 kilometres,” Professor Jourdan said.
“In a sense it’s like a baby planet, and therefore it is easier for scientists to understand it than say, a fully developed, large, rocky planet.”
To give you an idea of its size, you could squeeze at least three Vesta-size asteroids side by side in the state of New South Wales, Australia.
Vesta was visited by the NASA Dawn spacecraft in 2011, when it was observed that the asteroid had a more complex geological history than previously thought. With the aim of hoping to understand more about the asteroid, the Curtin research team analysed well-preserved samples of volcanic meteorites found in Antarctica that were identified as having fallen to Earth from Vesta. ...
Timing of the Magmatic Activity and Upper Crustal Cooking of Differentiated Asteroid 4 Vesta ~ F. Jourdan et al
- Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 273:205 (15 Mar 2020) DOI: 10.1016/j.gca.2020.01.036