Our Institute received 730,000 PLN funding in the Sonata-13 competition of the National Science Center, for the implementation of the project entitled “Inner Main Belt V-type asteroids as tracers of differentiated planetesimals”.
During the project a comprehensive study of basaltic asteroids, orbiting in the inner part of the Main Belt will be carried out. Both physical(surface mineralogy, shape, direction of rotation, mass) and dynamical (size of non-gravitational effects) properties of those bodies will be determined. This will allow us to understand the formation and evolution of planetesimals (embroys of Earth-like planets) in the Solar System.
Planetesimals existed during the early stages of the Solar System formation. Some of them formed terrestrial planets, and some of them were broken down to smaller fragments, which we can observe in the form of asteroids today. Unfortunately, we currently know too few basaltic asteroids: theory predicts that there should be many more. Discovering more objects of this type (which is the main task of the project) will support modern models of the evolution of the Planetary System. Those can then be used to explain the formation of other planetary systems in the Universe, with particular emphasis on the formation of terrestial planets.
The project principal investigator is Dr. Dagmara Oszkiewicz.