TWO X-ray flashes from the Sun have lit up the asteroid Eros, giving
astronomers their first chance to see which chemical elements are present on an
asteroid鈥檚 surface. NASA鈥檚 NEAR spacecraft, which is spiralling towards Eros,
carries an X-ray spectrometer designed to see the X-ray 鈥渇ingerprints鈥漮f the
elements.
The two flashes showed that the surface contains magnesium, aluminium,
silicon and iron. But it won鈥檛 be clear how abundant these elements are until
the spacecraft gets closer to the asteroid in mid-May. 鈥淭his will yield
information on the origin and evolution of Eros,鈥� says Jacob Trombka, leader of
the spectrometer science team at NASA. Eros may turn out to be a fragment of a
larger body, or a collection of small objects that clumped together in the early
Solar System.