The research was led by Sunao Hasegawa, an astronomer at the Japan Space Research Agency (JAXA), and under his auspices, scientists from several world universities used telescopes to track the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. They were particularly interested in asteroids larger than 100 kilometers – they probably survived from the time of the young solar system and could be a valuable testimony to the conditions prevailing in the system at that time.
Among the objects in the monitored zone, they identified two asteroids, which were named 203 Pompeii and 26 Justitia. The first has a diameter of 110 kilometers, the second is about half the size and both have an unusually red spectrum, which means that they reflect a lot of red light. They are even redder than type D asteroids, which until now were considered the reddest objects in the asteroid belt.
According to the study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters their properties resemble transneptune objects, ie asteroids, which are located beyond the orbit of the most distant planet in the solar system – Neptune. According to the authors of the work, this could mean that these bodies were formed only in this area, the so-called Kuiper belt. And then somehow they got inside the solar system.
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Outside the solar system
The outer solar system is full of material that remained there after its formation, and the local objects contain complex organic compounds, such as methane and methanol ice, which give the objects a typical reddish appearance when viewed spectrographed. In contrast, objects in the inner solar system contain only slight traces of organic material, so they tend to reflect blue light.
According to scientific hypotheses, the asteroids Pompeii and Justitia had to move to the belt between Jupiter and Mars at a time when the solar system was still young. If this is confirmed, then the new discovery shows how chaotic conditions prevailed at the time and that materials from different parts of the solar system could occasionally mix together.
Astronomers would therefore like to continue their research and describe their occurrence of migrating objects much more accurately in the future – they could gain a very accurate insight into the past of the solar system, and thus the conditions under which life originated on Earth.
The authors add that the results of their study also improve the prospects for physical research of asteroids. If a space agency wanted to study the asteroids that exist beyond Neptune, it would not have to send a mission to this extreme distance, but it would be enough to send it “only” to the asteroid belt behind Mars, where these objects also occur.
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