THANKS to a solar flare, astronomers have made the first ever measurements of
the composition of an asteroid. Their findings link the asteroid to the
primordial Universe, and should help researchers decode a wealth of information
from meteorites they have collected on Earth.
Meteorites often originate as asteroids, and by analysing them researchers
can tell what elements the parent asteroid contained. But this doesn’t reveal
how abundant the elements originally were, because it is impossible to tell
precisely where the fragment came from. Earlier this year, however, the Near
Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft reached 433 Eros, an asteroid
roughly…
