Ground-based observations of 16 Psyche reveal some of the detail in the asteroid's surface. But only a spacecraft can give us a better look.
King Tut was buried with an iron dagger made from an M-type meteorite. Image: Daniela Comelli/Polytechnic University of Milan
Psyche’s history is a history of uncertainty. For a long time, astronomers thought it was the exposed iron core of a much larger body. In this hypothesis, a powerful collision or series of collisions stripped away the body’s crust and mantle. The larger body would’ve been fully differentiated and measured something like 500 km in diameter. With the crust and mantle gone, only the iron-rich core remained.
that Psyche was once a molten blob. In that scenario, the outer layers cooled and formed stress cracks, and the buoyant molten core erupted as iron volcanoes. A team of researchers constructed a new map of Psyche’s surface to help prepare for the mission. The map is in a paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. The title is “” and the lead author is Saverio Cambioni from MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences .
Pure iron has an infinite dielectric constant. By measuring the dielectric constant on Psyche, the researchers could map the surface and locate regions richer in iron. Iron also has high thermal inertia because it’s so dense. So combining thermal inertia and dielectric constant measurements gives a good idea of which surface regions on Psyche are rich in iron and other metals.
Why does a low-elevation area have lower thermal inertia? Other studies show that the region is also radar-bright. Why is that? The researchers came up with three possibilities. The third hypothesis is that the lowlands have more silicate-rich materials than the highlands, giving them a lower dielectric constant than some areas of the highlands. The idea is that the Bravo-Golf depression could’ve been formed by an impact with a silicate-rich impactor and left silicate-rich residue behind.
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