Organic substances have been discovered on the Ryugu asteroid. Another asteroid, 2022 FD1, discovered by astronomers only on the night of March 24-25, flew past the Earth at noon on March 25 at a distance of only about eight thousand kilometers.
Asteroid 2022 FD1, discovered by astronomers on the night of March 24-25, flew past the Earth at a distance of about eight thousand kilometers, NASA reports. Calculations show that this body is between 1.7 and 3.8 meters in size (about the size of a car). It already approached Earth in September 2013 and will approach Earth again in May 2024. It is extremely rare for astronomers to discover small, potentially dangerous asteroids in advance, before they get close to Earth or enter the planet’s atmosphere.
More than ten types of amino acids, as well as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and nitrogen compounds, were found on samples of another asteroid, Ryugu, delivered to Earth by the Hayabusa-2 interplanetary station, which confirms the idea that C-type asteroids could have been suppliers to the young Earth prebiotic compounds. A report on the results of the work was presented at the 53rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC).
The Psyche interplanetary station will go into space at the end of this summer and will explore the metal asteroid Psyche for two years, according to NASA’s website. Psyche will explore a Main Belt asteroid that contains a lot of metals and could be the core of a protoplanet or a fragment of it. The station will study the asteroid from orbit, determining its properties, internal structure and composition using a number of scientific instruments – a magnetometer, a multispectral camera, a gamma and neutron spectrometer and a microwave instrument.
