Asteroids 'aged early': Surface regeneration happens a lot quicker on asteroids than on Earth, tells NASA

Scientists from the American space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), found that surface regeneration happens a lot quicker on asteroids than on Earth, a report published on the official website of NASA stated.

NASA experts from the OSIRIS-REx mission have learned about surface regeneration after analysing rock fractures on asteroid Bennu from high-resolution images taken by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

They discovered that the Sun’s heat fractures rocks on Bennu in just 10,000 to 100,000 years, a finding tha will help space scientists to estimate and understand how long it takes boulders on asteroids like Bennu to break down into smaller particles. The particles may either eject into space or stay on the asteroid's surface, the NASA article mentioned.

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Marco Delbo, senior scientist at Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur, Laboratoire Lagrange, Nice, France, said that tens of thousands of years might sound pretty slow, but "we thought surface regeneration on asteroids took a few millions of years".

Delbo, who is the lead author of a paper published in June 2022 in Nature Geoscience, added, "We were surprised to learn that the ageing and weathering process on asteroids happens so quickly, geologically speaking."

NASA has mentioned that surface changes on Earth are gradual, however, landslides, volcanoes and earthquakes can bring about surface changes suddenly. NASA said that the water, wind and temperature changes slowly break down rock layers, creating new surfaces over millions of years.

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But while mentioning the Bennu, NASA stated that rapid temperature changes on Bennu create internal stress that fractures and breaks down rocks.

The Sun rises every 4.3 hours on Bennu. At the equator, daytime highs can reach almost 260 F and nighttime lows plummet to nearly minus 10 F.

The cracks in the rocks on Bennu were spotted by the scientists in spacecraft images from the first surveys. Delbo said that the fractures seemed to point in the same direction, "a distinct signature that temperature shocks between the day and the night could be the cause."

The length and angles of more than 1,500 fractures were measured by Delbo and his colleagues in OSIRIS-REx images by hand. NASA said that some were shorter than a tennis racket, others longer than a tennis court.

The fractures were predominantly aligning in the northwest-southeast direction, suggesting they were caused by the Sun. Delbo said, "If landslides or impacts were moving boulders faster than the boulders were cracking, the fractures would point in random directions."

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