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The unusual history of the asteroid Lutetia

This animation is an artist’s impression of a possible scenario to explain how the unusual asteroid Lutetia came to now be located in the main asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. The recently formed asteroid is seen passing close to one of the very young rocky planets about four billion years ago and having its orbit drastically altered. The rare spectral properties show that Lutetia started life as a fragment of the material that was forming the inner planets but it is now found to be an unusual interloper much further from the Sun.

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