Washington, June 13 : NASA researchers and scientists from the United States, Germany and Japan have found a new mineral in material that likely came from a comet.
The mineral, a manganese silicide named “Brownleeite”, was discovered within an interplanetary dust particle, or IDP, that appears to have originated from comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup.
The comet originally was discovered in 1902 and reappears every 5 years.
The team that made the discovery is headed by Keiko Nakamura-Messenger, a space scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.