Ice found on first asteroid: 24 Themis

William Atkins
Friday, 30 April 2010 02:23

Science - Space

Astronomers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Tennessee used a Hawaiian telescope to observe ice on asteroid 24 Themis. This is the first time that ice has been found on an asteroid, and indicates where we got some of our water here on Earth--and possibly even our life.

 

Asteroid 24 Themis is an asteroid that, at the time of finding ice on it, was about 300 million miles (480 million kilometers) from the Sun--which is a little over three times the distance between the Sun and Earth.

It orbits between the planets of Mars and Saturn. 24 Themis is one of the largest of the main belt asteroids.

Astronomers previously thought only comets held ice. They thought asteroids were lacking of ice because they had never seen any ice on them, along with the knowledge that they traveled very close to the Sun.

That changed when two scientists, one from the Johns Hopkins University and the other from the University of Tennessee, used an infrared telescope located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, to view the asteroid 24 Themis.

The NASA 3-meter (9.8-foot) Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) was used on October 7, 2009, to find the presence of water ice on the surface of 24 Themis.

The surface of the asteroid appeared to be covered with water ice. Organic compounds, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, were also found on the asteroid's surface.

Since then, independent confirmation of this discovery has been made, and just this month the discovery was written up in a scientific journal for all to see.

Page two continues with the names of the two discovering astronomers, along with what the discovery could mean to our knowledge of Earth's past and as a planet with living life forms.