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Dawn Spacecraft Finds Signs of Water On Vesta
ananyo writes "Vesta, the second-most-massive body in the asteroid belt, was thought to be bone dry. But NASA's Dawn spacecraft has found evidence that smaller, water-rich asteroids once implanted themselves in Vesta's surface. The water stays locked up in hydrated minerals until subsequent impacts create enough heat to melt the rock and release the water as a gas, leaving pitted vents in the surface. The discovery shows that yet another body in the inner Solar System has a water cycle."
The Space Jacuzzi!
Water cycle assumes that the water is reused... but nothing can return the water back to the asteroid after it evaporates... Only a supply of more water from other impacts is possible.
The spacecraft left orbit earlier this month, so this is about recent analyzation of collected data, not something the spacecraft recently detected, as many might believe.
Sig: I stole this sig.
I prefer the Science Daily version. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120920202045.htm Less sensational.
Nobody read Marooned Off Vesta? By tyhe end of the story and since it was written in 1938 I'd expect some of the water would have made it there....
the earth was provided with water by ice and snowballs: the comets. there are plenty of those flying around, not surprising there would be water anywhere and almost everywhere in the solar system. even mercury has ice in craters that never get exposed to sun
NASA is notorious for stating "water" interchangeably with the fluid state of gasses. This is cause the wild cry of "WATER" fuels media cycles and helps to obtain and justify project funding,
First of all, you could comment with somewhat less flame-bait (it usually isn't NASA that does that but the media itself)... but yes, they found evidence of actual water. Not proof, mind you, since they didn't actually land and take a sample, but they found an excess of hydrogen and certain surface features that are characteristic of water. It's possible all that is caused by something besides water, but it's most likely water.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Would you prefer they say they found DHMO?
I mean, for public release, saying "water" makes more sense.
And anyway, water consumption for human use would be minimal, if it all. That water, unless it is deep underground, has been bombarded by cosmic rays for eons, it may be too radioactive in the form of Tritium to be safe.
Most likely, it will be used as fuel/reaction mass or as shielding from Cosmic Rays..
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Ding ding ding ding ding. Your robots have discovered water on a large asteroid with gravity. Move colony ship to colonize? Yes/No
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
And anyway, water consumption for human use would be minimal, if it all. That water, unless it is deep underground, has been bombarded by cosmic rays for eons, it may be too radioactive in the form of Tritium to be safe.
Cosmic rays form tritium on Earth via high energy neutrons interacting with atmospheric nitrogen. Tritium could not be produced in such a manner on an asteroid and gaseous tritium would escape into space near instantly.
Tritium has a half life of less than 12.5 years, so it could not accumulate without constant production.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
I guess that Vista was just that bad...
Yeah, but that was 4.5 billions of years ago, almost 1/3 the age of the entire universe. Suns have been born, lived their lives, and exploded to scatter their heavy elements across the cosmos since then. A lot can happen on those kinds of timescales, so it's not necessarily safe to assume that the solar system is still in the same state. Moreover ice sublimates at about -60C in a vacuum, so it isn't terribly stable in the inner solar system.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Comets. Icebergs of the sky. By jackknifing from one to the next at breakneck speed, we might get some kind of gravity boost ... or something.
"NASA is notorious for stating "water" interchangeably with the fluid state of gasses." -- for the claim of 'notorious' to be true, someone other than the vast masses of scientifically literate, engaged tea-party patriots in your own mind would have to know about it. Cite or GTFO.