Recent Advances in our Understanding of Water and Aqueous Activity in Chondrites

International audienceWater played a critical role in the evolution of rocky material and planetesimals in the early Solar System. Many primitive asteroids (the sources of chondrites) accreted a significant amount of water ice and were affected by aqueous alteration and/or fluid-assisted metamorphism. These secondary parent body processes have strongly modified the primary mineralogy of chondrites in favor of a wide diversity of secondary phases that formed by interaction with water. The mineralogical and isotopic characterization of these secondary phases in chondrites and returned samples from hydrous asteroids Ryugu and Bennu can help us reconstruct the dynamical evolution of water in the early Solar System and understand the timing and mechanisms of aqueous alteration on hydrous asteroids