| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Weird Asteroid Itakawa Begins To Reveal Its Secrets
MessageToEagle.com – Now astronomers have found the first evidence of a highly varied internal structure in asteroids. One of such asteroids is the near-Earth asteroid (25143) Itokawa, an intriguing subject as it has a strange peanut shape, as revealed by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa in 2005.
In 2010, asteroid Itokawa sample returned to Earth for further analysis.
Now, using ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT) and very precise ground-based observations, Stephen Lowry from the University of Kent, UK and colleagues have measured the speed at which the asteroid spins and how that spin rate is changing over time.
Itokawa’s different parts have different densities and its interior reveals the complexity.
“This is the first time we have ever been able to to determine what it is like inside an asteroid,” explains Lowry.
“We can see that Itokawa has a highly varied structure – this finding is a significant step forward in our understanding of rocky bodies in the Solar System.” Read rest of the story here:
