Ceres, largest object in asteroid belt, shows signs of habitability near Ertunet Crater

The asteroid belt that sits between Mars and Jupiter might be holding the building blocks of life, according to a new study. The dwarf planet Ceres in the region has a hidden ocean which harbours such ingredients, the research published in the journal Science Advances says. 

Ceres is the largest object in our Solar System’s asteroid belt, and its icy surface hides several small underground water bodies containing salt water. But the most fascinating discovery has been made around one of its largest craters, the Ertunet Crater. 

Maria Cristina De Sanctis, a planetary scientist at Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics, and her colleagues found the basics of life here.

Hundreds of square miles of area around this crater are covered with a layer of organic chemicals, also called aliphatics. Researchers suggest that the chemicals must have formed only in the past few million years or so. This is because aliphatic compounds cannot sustain the constant bombardment of radiation in deep space for a long time. 

This has led them to conclude that these organic molecules formed in Ceres’s underground ocean within the last 10 million years or so.

De Sanctis and her colleagues created the Ceres sediment in their lab using data from NASA’s Dawn mission which flew by the dwarf planet in 2012. They added aliphatic organics to the mix, the hydrocarbon found near the Ertunet Crater. 

To get an estimate of how long they have been there, they struck the mixture with powerful ultraviolet radiation and fast-moving ions.

This so-called “space weathering” can break down organic molecules. Turns out, the aliphatic compounds could not hold on for long, and this made the researchers realise that the substance had not been on Ceres for long either. 

There is an abundance of this type of hydrocarbon on its surface, and so the researchers believe it must have gotten there within the last 10 million years.

“The organic compounds found at the Ertunet Crater might have evolved over the life span of Ceres’s deep ocean, lasting at least a few hundred million years,” De Sanctis and her colleagues write in their recent paper. 

Besides, simulations show that these organic molecules weren’t delivered by any asteroid or comet and formed deep inside Ceres.

Ceres was once covered with a huge ocean of salt water beneath its crust, but today only pockets of it survive. Previous studies hint at the possibility that rock and salt water interacted with each other, releasing enough energy to create little pockets of habitability.

“This makes the region a preferred site for a future in situ or sample return mission to Ceres,” they write.