An interesting discovery was made by scientists examining the asteroid 16 Psyche using the James Webb Space Telescope: They found a component of water on the “golden asteroid,” which may be present there in the form of rust. Among other things, this could be an important discovery because it could provide a clue to determining exactly how the asteroid formed, the researchers wrote. Life Sciences.
Asteroid 16 Psyche, or simply Psyche, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, was discovered in 1852. At 232 kilometers in length, it is the largest known M-type asteroid. The object, as its classification suggests, is largely made of metal, and it has been suggested that it may contain billions of tons of iron, nickel, and even gold and platinum. In the press, and mainly for this reason, they have long wondered how many trillions of dollars it could be worth.
Of course, this is only interesting on a theoretical level, because the technology does not exist to mine asteroids located 3.5 billion kilometers away. Based on the results of research over the past decade, it is no longer certain at this point that there is actually as much metal in the asteroid as previously thought, and it is possible that there may be a lot of silicates in it as well. To find out exactly what Psyche is made of, NASA launched an expedition last fall, and if all goes well, their spacecraft could reach the object in July 2029.
This mission could also be interesting, because in 2017, researchers also discovered that in addition to the abundance of precious metals, the asteroid could also contain water. In images taken with NASA's infrared telescope, they found exactly the signs of hydroxyl groups that are also found in water, where the oxygen atom is linked to the hydrogen atom by a single covalent bond. Thus, it was conceivable that there could be water in the form of ice or minerals on the asteroid, but they could not confirm this.
NASA Psyche Illustration – Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
This is where the James Webb Space Telescope, which sees primarily in the infrared range, came into the picture, and its infrared sensors were pointed at Psyche's north pole in March 2023. The results of that have now been published, Manuscript not yet reviewed It is currently accessible on the pre-print server arXiv. According to the researchers, the shape of the hydroxyl groups discovered in Psyche is similar to many carbon-rich meteorites, and they conclude that
Hydroxyl groups are attached to metals, meaning they are practically present on the body in the form of rust.
Of course, it is not excluded that there is water on the asteroid, because they were not able to examine it all with the James Webb Space Telescope, and it is also possible that there is water in the part that was examined, just so little that the sensors could no longer detect it. In the latter case, the concentration of water would be roughly half that on the Moon, where there is roughly one drop of water per kilogram of Earth.
From the presence of hydroxyl groups, it can also be inferred that the asteroid may have formed on the outer edge of the solar system and migrated inward from there, but there is also evidence that the presence of hydroxyl is also due to collisions during its journey. In the future, researchers will aim to find exactly where this asteroid is located, and for this they will also want to examine the south pole and the large crater.
