It's an astonishing fact that quite a few meteorites have conclusively been shown to originate on one or other of the thousands of asteroids that (mostly) inhabit the region of the Solar System between Jupiter and Mars.
Of these, a large percentage came here from Vesta, the second largest asteroid and the fourth to be discovered. The three members of the HED achondrite meteorite group are:
Howardites: composed of material from the surface and subsurface rocks of the parent body
Eucrites: from the surface regolith of the parent body
Diogenites: fragments of subsurface minerals of the parent body
These were gouged out and projected into space by a huge impact billions of years ago: Vesta still bears a large crater formed during this event.
No comments:
Post a Comment