A group of researchers from NASA have discovered that the moon and an asteroid in the solar system have much more in common than previously believed.
Scientists from NASA's Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) in Moffett Field, Calif., have discovered the same population of high-speed projectiles that impacted our lunar neighbor four billion years ago also hit the giant asteroid Vesta and perhaps other large asteroids.
"It's always intriguing when interdisciplinary research changes the way we understand the history of our solar system," said Yvonne Pendleton, NLSI director. "Although the moon is located far from Vesta, which is in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, they seem to share some of the same bombardment history."
The discovery not only proves an unexpected link between the Moon and Vesta but also makes it easier to study the early bombardment, scientists said. It also reinforces the previously found evidences that state the repositioning of gas giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn from their original orbits to their current location destabilized portions of the asteroid belt and triggered a solar system-wide bombardment of asteroids billions of years ago, called the lunar cataclysm.
"It appears that the asteroidal meteorites show signs of the asteroid belt losing a lot of mass four billion years ago, with the escaped mass beating up on both the surviving main belt asteroids and the moon at high speeds," saidlead author Simone Marchi, who has a joint appointment between two of NASA's Lunar Science Institutes, one at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. and another at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. "Our research not only supports the current theory, but it takes it to the next level of understanding."
The findings were published in the March issue of Nature Geoscience.
