WATER has been confirmed on an asteroid for the first time. At an American Astronomical Society meeting in Puerto Rico last week, Humberto Campins of the University of Central Florida in Orlando and colleagues reported finding signs of water ice in the infrared spectrum of asteroid . This by Andrew Rivkin of Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland, and his team.
Ice is thought to have formed beyond a “snow line” somewhere in the asteroid belt, but it is not clear how common it is in asteroids because their surface ice rapidly vaporises. The…
