{"id":194548,"date":"2024-08-14T13:26:32","date_gmt":"2024-08-14T18:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/webb-telescope-unveils-evidence-of-water-and-hydration-on-asteroid-psyche"},"modified":"2024-08-14T13:26:32","modified_gmt":"2024-08-14T18:26:32","slug":"webb-telescope-unveils-evidence-of-water-and-hydration-on-asteroid-psyche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/webb-telescope-unveils-evidence-of-water-and-hydration-on-asteroid-psyche","title":{"rendered":"Webb Telescope Unveils Evidence of Water and Hydration on Asteroid Psyche"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/webb-telescope-unveils-evidence-of-water-and-hydration-on-asteroid-psyche.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cAsteroids are leftovers from the planetary formation process, so their compositions vary depending on where they formed in the solar nebula,\u201d said Dr. Anicia Arredondo. \u201cHydration that is endogenous could suggest that Psyche is not the remnant core of a protoplanet.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Could a metallic asteroid contain water and what can this teach us about the asteroid\u2019s formation and evolution? This is what a <a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2407.12162\">recent study<\/a> due for publication in the <em>Planetary Science Journal<\/em> hopes to address as a team of researchers led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) investigated whether the metallic <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/solar-system\/asteroids\/16-psyche\/\">asteroid Psyche <\/a>\u2014which is one of the largest objects in the main asteroid belt\u2014could contain evidence of water and hydration.<\/p>\n<p>This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand the formation and evolution of asteroids and what this can teach us about the history of the solar system. This study also comes as NASA\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jpl.nasa.gov\/missions\/psyche\">Psyche spacecraft<\/a> is currently en route to the Psyche asteroid and is scheduled to arrive in August 2029.<\/p>\n<p>For the study, the researchers used NASA\u2019s powerful James Webb Space Telescope to observe the 140-mile diameter asteroid, which detected evidence of what are known as hydroxyl molecules, or molecules containing bonded hydrogen and oxygen, and specifically identified traces of water, more commonly known as H2O in its molecular form. Now, the question arises as to if the water got there from exogenous (external) or endogenous (internal) processes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cAsteroids are leftovers from the planetary formation process, so their compositions vary depending on where they formed in the solar nebula,\u201d said Dr. Anicia Arredondo. \u201cHydration that is endogenous could suggest that Psyche is not the remnant core of a protoplanet.\u201d Could a metallic asteroid contain water and what can this teach us about the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":706,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[385,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolution","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}