By Zakutnyaya Olga: New data on Vesta asteroid revealing its complex structure and turbulent history were finally made public. Obtained by NASA's Dawn mission, the first ever spacecraft to orbit an asteroid, they confirm earlier suggestions on Vesta's origin and nature and pose new questions for planetary scientists. The findings show that Vesta could have possibly become a real planet had it not been located in the vicinity of Jupiter. A batch of articles published in Science magazine marked the completion of the first part of NASA's Dawn mission, targeted at two small bodies of the Solar System believed to be remnants from the first stages of its formation. According to the current theory, Earth and Mars, as well as Venus and Mercury, formed from much smaller bodies through accretion. However, the process was not at all smooth with Jupiter in the vicinity, whose gravity interfered with the formation of one more planet leaving a belt of asteroids instead of one body. This asteroid belt, known as the main belt, now hosts numerous small bodies, Vesta being one of the largest (with radii from 289 to 229 km) and one of the most massive among them. It was believed that Vesta is a protoplanet – a body formed from much smaller planetesimals, which could later have become a planet. Tags: asteroid, Sci-Tech, World, Commentary, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia.
