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Note, Paper: A & A assay

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The March issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics (vol. 683, Mar. 24) is a little light. Two small-body articles are roughly typical of that journal.

Galinier, M. Delbo, M. Avdellidou, C. et al. Discovery of the first olivine-dominated A-type… p. L3 49057
García-Martín, P. Kruk, S. Popescu, M. Hubble Asteroid Hunter-III. Physical Properties of… a122 46771

I’ll comment that olivine is an open issue within asteroids (and comets- see Stardust). The ‘missing dunite problem’ has been a head-scratcher for… how many decades now? In brief: we have iron meteorites, and iron (M-type) asteroids. These “space cannonballs” formed by being the cores of planetismals that differentiated (melted and self-segregated) in the early Solar System when everything was hot. But if these are the cores, where are all the mantles? The bigger part of a differentiated body? Given the number of iron meteorites and asteroids, there should be an even bigger population of differentiated, olivine-rich (i. e., dunite) meteorites and asteroids, but we don’t see them. Until now (to an extent).

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