2024-04-29 18:55:27
We can’t travel in time. It is a painful reality, but it is what it is. It is impossible to go back to that time of year that you would have liked to experience, that hug that you didn’t know would be your last or that first kiss that you should never have given. But in the space Yes, you can study the past. Not only because there are objects so far away that the light that reaches us was sent millions of years ago. Also because there are little time capsules that tell us how something as large as our galaxy, as intimate as our planet or as broad as our planetary system came to be. Therefore, to study the origin of the solar system, missions have been launched for years aimed at analyzing asteroids that were possibly born with it. It is something interesting, but for some scientists it would be much more beneficial to study of minimoons.
It is not an error. It is true that there is only one Moon on Earth, but we have a few minimoons. These are small cosmic bodies, quite close to Earth, whose orbit is influenced by both it and other components of the solar system.
The best thing about these minimoons is that they are quite close to Earth. Therefore, sending a mission there would be much easier than launching it to those asteroids that some probes are already studying. Although the origin of minimoons is not entirely clear, it is believed that they may have their origin in the famous asteroid belt, located between Mars and Jupiter. This belt is considered to have once been part of the protosolar nebula, which supposedly gave rise to the solar system. Therefore, it is not necessary to turn to distant asteroids to know how our planetary system was born. We have the necessary clues much closer to our planet.
Missions to study the origin of the solar system
The two main missions that have traveled to asteroids to study the origin of the solar system are Osiris Rexfrom NASA, and Hayabusa 2from the Japanese space agency (JAXA).
The first objective of Osiris Rex has been the asteroid Determine, of which it sent its first samples to Earth last September. Now, he is on his way to another asteroid, Apophis, which he is expected to reach in 2029. As for Hayabusa 2, his mission has been very similar to that of Osiris Rexbut in the asteroide Ryugu.
It is believed that both asteroids, which have barely changed over time, may preserve some of the materials that the solar system had at its origin. The problem is that they are so far. The distance to our planet varies as they move; but, in general, for Bennu it exceeds 100 million kilometers and for Ryugu it exceeds 300 million. The missions that have been sent there have been very expensive and take a long time, so doing it regularly is not easy at all.
The first samples of Bennu are already on Earth. Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona
Why don’t we take advantage of what we get?
We might ask ourselves why we don’t study the origin of the solar system with the fragments of asteroids that have collided with Earth in the form of meteorites. It’s a good question, but it has an easy answer. Its study would be of no use to us, because have been contaminated with our own atmosphere. Another option is necessary and the key is in the minimoons.
The role of minimoons in understanding the origin of the solar system
The minimoons probably also preserve materials from the origin of the solar system. Exactly like those distant asteroids. But its advantage is that They are much closer.
As explained in an interview for Live Science the MIT astronomer Richard Binzel, The minimoons, since their origin, have been bounced and dragged by the different components of the solar system, as if it were a pinball. That could give us even more information about how our planetary system has been evolving.
It is true that we cannot compare these mini-moons with our main satellite. But they have many stories to tell us. It is worth at least knowing its existence.
By: HIPERTEXTUAL