The European Space Agency (ESA) is considering a space mission called Marco Polo, in which a spacecraft would land on a small asteroid, drill into its surface to collect samples of rock and dust, and then fly back to Earth where it would drop its sample capsule down to the surface. Two satellite manufacturing companies are currently conducting a feasibility study; if ESA signs off on the proposal, Marco Polo could sail off into space in 2017.
Asteroids are chunks of debris left over from the chaotic mass that spun around the young Sun during the formation of the Solar System about 4.6 billion years ago. The rest of the material coalesced into planets [The Daily Mail]. Researchers say that studying the composition of an asteroid could give them insight into how the solar system formed. The roughly $430 million mission would also serve as a warm-up for a hypothetical round-trip journey to Mars, as it would enable the development of technology needed for getting up and down from a large planetary body with a much bigger gravitational pull [Telegraph].
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In between Mars and Jupiter, the spacecraft Rosetta buzzed by an asteroid on Friday and snapped photos of the chunk of rock as it hurtled through space. The European Space Agency’s spacecraft flew to within 500 miles of the Steins asteroid, getting a close-up view of the diamond-shaped Steins asteroid, a gray, 3-mile (5-km) wide rock that appears in images as a pock-marked [rock] with multiple craters that ultimately will help determine its age [SPACE.com].
Researchers hope that the Rosetta’s observations of the asteroid will shed light on the processes that shaped our solar system. The rocks are often referred to as “space rubble” because they represent the leftovers that were never incorporated into planets when the Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago. As with comets, they may contain very primitive materials that have not undergone the constant recycling experienced by, for example, Earth rocks. Rosetta data should therefore help researchers understand better how our local space environment has evolved over time [BBC News].
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They call it the Mars dichotomy, or say that the planet is “two-faced.” Researchers have known for decades that the Red Planet is divided between smooth, low-lying plains in the north, and craggy, cratered highlands in the southern hemisphere. Mars orbiters have also confirmed that the planet’s crust is thinner in the north.
Now, a new study offers an explanation for this strange phenomenon: Around 4 billion years ago, an enormous asteroid smashed into Mars and changed the character of its northern half. “This impact is really one of the defining events in Mars’ history,” said [study co-author] Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna…. “More than anything this has determined the shape of the planet’s surface” [USA Today].
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