NASA Asteroid Capture Mission Discovers Surprising Structure in Their Target

Small asteroids may look far more different than scientists first expected. Scientists involved with the NASA Asteroid Initiative have announced that small asteroids can actually be flying rock clusters or even clouds of dust surrounding solid rocks.

The two scientists that made the announcement were studying the asteroid, 2011 MD, with the Spitzer Space Telescope. They wanted to determine if it fit with a specific narrow range and if it could be used for NASA's asteroid mission. They used infrared light in order to determine the asteroid's size. While they found that the asteroid is about six meters in diameter, which makes it perfect for the mission, that isn't all that they discovered.

"People have assumed that small asteroids are debris from collisions of larger asteroids, so these really small guys would be just single slabs or rock flying in space," said Michael Mommert, one of the researchers, in a news release. "But we found that this one is 65 percent empty.

What does this mean? It's very likely that the asteroid is actually a flying cluster of rocks or a cloud of dust with a solid rock at its center. This isn't the first asteroid to be found with this type of structure, though. Earlier, scientists discovered that asteroid 2009 BD also had a similar structure.

"Now we can go back and propose some more observation time just for the science investigation," said David Trilling, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Now we want to learn something more about the universe."

The findings pave the way for the study of small asteroids. This field, in particular, hasn't received a lot of attention due to the difficulty of observing them. Now that NASA scientists know about 2011 MD, though, they're planning on continuing investigations and preparations for the asteroid capture mission in about seven years' time.

The findings are published in The Astrophysical Journal.