Asteroid Pallas’ violent history uncovered in new pictures
A gigantic, intensely cratered asteroid known as Pallas has a violent history, researchers uncovered in a new investigation.
Pallas, which is the third biggest object in the asteroid belt and named after the Greek goddess of wisdom, can be seen in detailed pictures published Monday in a study in Nature Astronomy.
Specialists believe that the asteroid's pockmarked surface is an aftereffect of its one of a kind orbit. Pallas has a tilted orbit, so it is essentially smashing through the asteroid belt at an angle, not at all like most other comparable objects.
"Pallas' orbit implies very high-velocity impacts," Michaël Marsset, the paper's lead author and a postdoctoral student in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, told MIT News. "From these images, we ...